Thread by @StarCityBen

(Thread) Hasbro released their Q4 2021 financial results, and #MTG was the brightest spot in Hasbro's entire company! There are some some extremely interesting takeaways from the report. Let's discuss! (/1)

1) Tabletop gaming and digital gaming revenue accounted for 74% and 26% of total revenue for WOTC. No matter what doomsayers are putting out there, physical play is essential to the long-term health of #MTG. Hasbro recognizes this! (/2)

2) WoTC growth in 2022 is expected to be mid-single digits. 2021 was WoTC's best year ever, with $1.287 billion in revenue (up 42% year over year). Hasbro forecasting a much slower growth this year means that Hasbro feels they have found the equilibrium for product releases. (/3)

3) I've maintained for years that #MTG was extremely undermonetized, because it's a game system and not just one game. The best thing WOTC's done in recent years is identifying finding different segments (Tournament/EDH/etc) and building products for them.
(/4)

4) I can not state this enough, but Digital Gaming Revenue (the majortiy of which would be MTGA and MTGO) is dramatically underperforming. If you're reading this thread, you're probably aware of the issues that people have with these platforms. But for sake of stating them: (/5)

5) - There are major issues with the MTGA economy.
- There are a lot of baseline features (like spectator mode) that are missing from MTGA
- Multiplayer is a LOT better in person than in MTGO
- The Standard format (which is the main driver for MTGA) is not popular. (/6)

- Alchemy (which is a REALLY good idea in theory) was implemented in a way that alienated a lot of players (and destabalized the Historic format)
- There are 20+ years of cards missing from MTGA
- Pioneer (which was supposed to be big push on MTGA) never materialized (/7)

Long story short - the recent hires of Cynthia Williams and Time Fields are meant to shore up the issues #WOTC and #MTG have in the digital area. This is *NOT* going to come at the expense of paper #MTG! (/8)

This is not a zero-sum game where paper Magic has to suffer for Digital to get attention. The growth of other formats in paper Magic has shown this! Instead, Hasbro is going to throw a ton of new resources at digital MTG and try to grow it tremendously. (/9)

I don't expect to see this in 2022 or early 2023. The largest growth in #MTG in 2022 is going to rely heavily on the success of the Netflix show coming out Q3/Q4 of this year. All signs say that there wil be huge improvements coming to digital MTG, likely Q3/Q4 in 2023! (/thread)

Also, since this came up a bunch in follow-up Tweets:
Aside from revenue numbers provided directly from the Hasbro report, all opinions on this thread are my own extrapolations, and not anything officially stated by Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro.