Konvoy this week launched its Gaming Business Report for the primary quarter of 2025, the place it revealed extra details about developments within the business, together with enterprise capital offers and mergers and acquisitions throughout the globe. In response to the report, Konvoy predicts that the video games business will likely be price $186 billion in 2026, a 4.7% improve year-over-year. It additionally reveals data on the key offers within the business, in addition to the consequences of the escalating detente between the U.S. and China.
The corporate reviews that the video games business noticed 43 mergers and acquisition transactions in Q1, with the 2 largest being Scopely’s $3.5 billion acquisition of Niantic’s gaming division, and Fashionable Occasions Group’s $620 million acquisition of Plarium. It additionally notes that there have been 77 VC offers on this quarter — which was a 6% lower from the earlier quarter. Nevertheless, the full quantity of VC funding was $373 million, which was a 35% improve quarter-over-quarter.
Josh Chapman, Konvoy managing companion, advised GamesBeat in an interview, “Within the first quarter of 2025, North America noticed 53% of the gaming funding vs Asia which noticed solely 33% of the full funding capital within the sector. The third runner up is Europe, but we see virtually zero funding or deal exercise out of Africa, South America, or Australia. The rationale for that’s largely because of there not being native funding teams, as a result of there are sport corporations in these areas however no native capital teams to construct up the native deal market. Wanting forward, we’re very assured that NA, Asia, and EU will stay the core areas for gaming funding and deal exercise.”
One of many different main takeaways from the report considerations the U.S.’s ban on Chinese language entities, together with the impact it had on video games similar to Marvel Snap and Conflict of Clans. Konvoy provides that it expects the U.S.’s scrutiny over entities in nations similar to China to extend, and that this has the potential to have a big influence on the business given how China is concerned in gaming. It additionally famous that Ubisoft is the most recent gaming entity to just accept cash from a Tencent, a Chinese language conglomerate.
GamesBeat requested Chapman concerning the tensions between the 2 entities, and he responded, “The stress for US/China revolves round US video games requiring a gate-keeper in China and the video games out of China having open-entry to the US market. This imbalance, alongside the TikTok tensions, is the supply of the commerce tensions and the way it pertains to the gaming business.”
Konvoy’s full Gaming Business Report contains regional insights and is now obtainable on the corporate’s web site.