Thread by @BW

Dungeons & Dragons has never been more popular.

Can Hasbro finally figure out how to monetize the 50-year-old classic tabletop role-playing franchise? A thread 🧵🐉

Hasbro is kicking off a year-long D&D blitz, starting with the release of the #DnDMovie, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, and ending with One D&D, the next iteration of the game trib.al/seQwF5M

Meanwhile, the game has minted a new generation of dice-slinging fans, along with D&D-themed podcasts, Twitch shows and D&D influencers on YouTube and TikTok.

But Hasbro needs to make more money from the revered franchise trib.al/seQwF5M

Hasbro is now trying to replicate with D&D what it did with Magic: The Gathering, building the fantasy card game into its first billion-dollar brand, thanks in part to an aggressive expansion into mobile gaming, media licensing agreements and ancillary products

Hasbro doesn’t break out D&D-specific numbers for investors, but Arpine Kocharyan, an analyst at UBS, has estimated that D&D generates more than $150 million in annual sales trib.al/seQwF5M

In October 2022, Hasbro set a goal of increasing its overall profit by 50% over the next three years, noting that D&D would be “a major growth priority.”

But judging by the game’s history, supersizing D&D’s coffers won’t be a simple quest trib.al/seQwF5M

D&D has often struggled to live up to its potential, leaving in its wake decades of infighting, litigation and squandered opportunities. And sure enough, just as Hasbro was gearing up to mobilize its zealous fan base for the feature film, it hit yet another self-inflicted snag

For years, Wizards of the Coast, which operates D&D, maintained a laissez-faire system in which anyone was free to use basic game mechanics to create their own adventures.

But in 2022, Hasbro approached companies with a contract that would seemingly end D&D’s open-source era

When the contract leaked online, angry fans began circulating petitions chastising Hasbro for its perceived avarice and threatening to boycott various D&D products, including the forthcoming movie. Hasbro soon apologized and backtracked trib.al/seQwF5M

But for those who’ve managed the business of D&D in the past, the great licensing war of 2023 was a reminder of how difficult it can be to get its fans to go along with change.

Read the full story here trib.al/seQwF5M