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Scopely agrees to buy Niantic's game division for $3.5 billion

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venturebeat.com

Monopoly Go maker Scopely to acquire Niantic’s games business for $3.5B

Scopely has agreed to acquire Niantic's games business, which includes Pokémon Go, in a deal valued at $3.5 billion.
venturebeat.com venturebeat.com
Scopely, the publisher of Monopoly Go!, has agreed to acquire Niantic's game division for $3.5 billion. This includes Pokémon Go, Pikmin Bloom, and Monster Hunter Now as well as the companion apps, Campfire and Wayfarer. The Niantic games business has more than 30 million monthly active players and drove more than $1 billion in revenue in 2024. After the transaction, the remainder of Niantic led by John Hanke is spinning off into Niantic Spatial as ageospatial AI company. It will also continue to run the original AR games, Ingress Prime and Peridot.
 
Scopely is going to over-monetize and probably underserve (and kill) all these games eventually. Their track record's terrible, they just shovel all their resources into ads.
 
This... This doesn't add up. 1bn USD in revenue in a single year yet it sells for less that 4bn? Why would Niantic divest in the first place? If they've found a way to lose money with all THIS then holy moly, what hope do the rest of us have?
 
fiendcode said:
Scopely is going to over-monetize and probably underserve (and kill) all these games eventually. Their track record's terrible, they just shovel all their resources into ads.
Click to expand...
Monoploy Go's still going on strong in terms of profit, so (un)fortunately their strategy seems to work. Pokemon TCG Pocket is still looking to be incredibly popular for a long time, so TPC still has a nice stake in the mobile market if things go south for GO.
 
fiendcode said:
Scopely is going to over-monetize and probably underserve (and kill) all these games eventually. Their track record's terrible, they just shovel all their resources into ads.
Click to expand...
Everyone is saying this, but I do not think that The Pokémon Company will allow this.

But I think that Pikmin Bloom will not survive another year.
 
purely for illustrative purposes/finger in the air guess:

1B rev
30% app store fees
20% Pokemon royalties
15% UA/marketing
15% operating costs
leaves you 300m operating income
11x - 12x on that for ~$3.5B, feels pretty fair for a negative growth game. If anything can argue it's a premium (cause of pokemon/saudis can overpay/whatever reason). plenty of assets like this (granted not at this scale/with this IP) go for far less.
 
sheep said:
purely for illustrative purposes/finger in the air guess:

1B rev
30% app store fees
20% Pokemon royalties
15% UA/marketing
15% operating costs
leaves you 300m operating income
11x - 12x on that for ~$3.5B, feels pretty fair for a negative growth game. If anything can argue it's a premium (cause of pokemon/saudis can overpay/whatever reason). plenty of assets like this (granted not at this scale/with this IP) go for far less.
Click to expand...
There's no world where 20% royalties are a thing, even for Pokemon.
 
fiendcode said:
Scopely is going to over-monetize and probably underserve (and kill) all these games eventually. Their track record's terrible, they just shovel all their resources into ads.
Click to expand...
I don't know if can get worse, Pokémon go already has a lot of greedy monetización
 
Horrible news.
For fans and the industry. You only need to take one look at the hellhole monetisation tactics in Monopoly GO to see why.

sheep said:
purely for illustrative purposes/finger in the air guess:

1B rev
30% app store fees
20% Pokemon royalties
15% UA/marketing
15% operating costs
leaves you 300m operating income
11x - 12x on that for ~$3.5B, feels pretty fair for a negative growth game. If anything can argue it's a premium (cause of pokemon/saudis can overpay/whatever reason). plenty of assets like this (granted not at this scale/with this IP) go for far less.
Click to expand...

I'd say OI could be a range lower than that.
$200-300M
All depends on acquisition costs/marketing
King had $2.8B in revenue and a resulting ~$500M OI

EV/LTM EBIDTA, 8-15 (latter covid peak bubble), median 10
EV/LTM Rev, 2-7, median 3.5
 
Undead Warrior said:
There's no world where 20% royalties are a thing, even for Pokemon.
Click to expand...
top tier licenses are easily high teens to low 20s. disney/marvel, pokemon type IPs. esp for something where the IP is entirely central to the game - like is the case for pokemon go - can def see 20%+.
 
I'm sure the nature of the contract with Niantic forbids this but I honestly think TPC would be better served by growing Pokemon Works to the point where Go (or ideally a new iteration of Go) could be delivered in-house.
 
Well that's some terrible news, thankfully I never personally got that into Go so I kind of dodged the bullet on this if it does go belly up. I can't imagine Nintendo is very happy about this either.
 
Last edited:
Revenue Estimates via PG:

Pokemon Go:
- $796.6m in 2024. $8.5b lifetime.
- Recent Unova event hit $19.8m in 2 days.

Monster Hunter Now:
- $276.1m since launch.
- "Revenue has declined considerably since launch, down from $42.6m in October 2023 to just $5.8m in February 2025, its worst month yet."

Pikmin Bloom:
- $79.4m since launch.
- December 2024 was its best-ever performance with $4.4m, 65% up year-over-year.


I can see why Scopely listed Bloom above MHN in their official PR statement. Upwards trajectory vs. decline.
 
The last I heard, both Nintendo and The Pokemon Company are Niantic shareholders along with Google (from which Niantic spun out of).

So my musings:

- nice payday for Nintendo and TPC (double win for Nintendo since they are of course a major shareholder in TPC)
- they will be investors in Niantic Spatial (in case of future entertainment application of their tech)
- re-negotiated licensing terms with Scopely whom they have no direct stake/relationship in (???)
- Saudi PIF sorta pays themselves since while they own Scopely, they also have a hefty stake in Nintendo (7+% of the company)

So twisty.
 
fiendcode said:
The PIF has continued selling off their Nintendo holdings are down to around 4% now.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the correction!

Interesting. I wonder why? No secret the PIF is investing heavily in gaming and entertainment.

Reference link for anyone curious:

www.marketscreener.com

Nintendo Co., Ltd.: Shareholders, Shareholding Structure - MarketScreener

Find the distribution by types of shareholders of Nintendo Co., Ltd. listed on the Japan Exchange stock exchange. Discover the geographical origin of the shareholders of Nintendo Co., Ltd..
www.marketscreener.com www.marketscreener.com
 
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