Asmodee and Board Game Arena celebrate 10 million users' milestone, cementing the online board gaming platform as the industry's #1
Boulogne-Billancourt, France—August 13, 2024— Asmodee and Board Game Arena (BGA), the premier online destination for board game enthusiasts, proudly announce the achievement of surpassing 10 million registered accounts. This significant milestone marks a pivotal moment in the platform’s evolution since its creation in 2010. Originally conceived over a decade ago by two engineers to unite players worldwide, Board Game Arena has blossomed into a cornerstone of the board game community. Emerging initially as an online tournament website exclusively available in France, it rapidly gained momentum. Today, BGA stands as the fastest-growing online board game platform globally, with five million hours played each month.
One of the strengths of the platform is its accessibility. With just an internet connection and a web browser, players can enjoy BGA on their desktop, tablet, or smartphone. The platform boasts a library of over 900 games available for free, making it the perfect place to play beloved games or discover new ones. One of the pivotal moments in the history of the platform happened with the introduction of games from renowned publishers, propelling the platform to new heights such as Carcassonne, 7 Wonders, Dice Forge and Lost Cities.
What sets Board Game Arena apart and made it a success
With nearly 5 million hours played each month, Board Game Arena stands as the fastest-growing online board game platform globally. BGA is committed to providing an authentic and excellent experience to its players. Each game is a faithful mirror of the physical board game ensuring clear and unwavering rules enforcement for a true and fair experience. This is especially beneficial for complex or more fiddly games with a lot of manipulations and moving parts.
Games can be taught through an interactive tutorial explaining the intricacies of the games and each game’s page has links to other useful resources to learn the game. The platform allows players to decide at what rhythm to play, from real-time to turn-based with specific indication of the number of actions per day required, making the platform flexible to each kind of player.
The community remains central to the success of BGA and with now 10M members, it is crucial to keep it entertained with new features, but also welcomed and safe thanks to the effort from the moderation teams.
More competitive players, the ELO rank tracks their progress and performance matching players from similar skill level. Players can also join tournaments created by the highly invested community, compete in the Arena system or relax and join a simple table of their favorite game.
2014, the introduction of an affordable premium subscription
While every player can still enjoy the platform for free, a premium subscription has been implemented and gives unlimited access to all the games available on the platform. Its accessible starting price of 3€/month is often seen as a no-brainer by enthusiasts, but players with a free account can always be invited to join a table created by a Premium member.
Premium accounts profits are redistributed between the teams involved creating the game, both physical and on BGA. Part of the profits also support innovations and maintenance of the platform.
2021, a critical turn in the life of the platform
Acquired by Asmodee in 2021, the platform benefited from Asmodee’s own studios and partners to further develop its gaming library. The arrival of games such as Azul, 7 Wonders Duel, Ticket to Ride, CATAN solidified Board Game Arena as the predominant online board gaming platform.
“What we love with Board Game Arena is that the platform makes board games accessible to everyone. It is the perfect way for players to discover a huge boardgame library for free and play their favorite games wherever they are. For publishers and game designers, it is the perfect way to display novelties or classics games and to build their communities.” said Thomas Kœgler, Deputy COO who oversaw the acquisition of BGA in 2021. “We also fell in love with the community of players and dedicated developers who are working on bringing new titles to the platform every day.”
The platform gained a lot of popularity when the World had to be confined in 2020. BGA allowed friends and family to keep their gaming nights alive and allowed people to stay connected during that rough time. It quickly became one of the go-to place for players to play and discuss games during that time, making BGA a service highly praised by players.
But even since, the core team of BGA managed to keep on retaining and recruiting more players thanks in part to savvy development, implementation of new features, and a constant growing of the gaming library. For example, in the past year alone, over 130 new games joined the platform library, including hot titles like Ark Nova, HEAT, Forest Shuffle, Planet Unknown, Sky Team or fan favorites such as Ticket to Ride Europe.
With players interacting in more than 40 languages the platform is available from and connecting every day to the platform from 200 countries, BGA is a tremendous success story where the most played games are Wingspan, Ark Nova, Terraforming Mars, CATAN, Ticket to Ride or AZUL.
Going beyond the screen
Earlier this year, Asmodee and BGA organized the First World Championship of AZUL, one of the top 3 games played on the platform.
More than 4000 players from around the Globe competed in 8 qualifying tournaments on BGA. The Finals took place at the Museu Nacional do Azulejo in Lisbon, Portugal were the 8 players battled to win the first ever Azul World Championship, Tung Yat “Sunny” Cheng from Hong Kong was crowned.
This shows how BGA can transcend boardgame and truly brings players together in a corner of the world, around the same passion. The enthusiasm and success that first hybrid tournament gathered will most likely result in other iterations in the future. “When the platform was coded back in 2010, we weren’t imagining that it would one day become such a success and a staple of the board gaming community.” Said Alexandre Schlecht, Board Game Arena Managing Director. “We are committed to providing the best possible experience for board game players and we will continue to add new features, games, and exciting ways to play.”
The 10 million users’ community can be accessed here: https://boardgamearena.com/
About Board Game Arena
Launched in 2010, Board Game Arena is the leading online platform for board games, creating a space for more than 10 million players to play online. Over 800 different games - such as Catan, Wingspan, Azul or Carcassonne - are available for anyone. With a user-friendly interface, and fast matchmaking, it offers a convenient and enjoyable gaming experience for players worldwide on any device. It's the perfect place for board game enthusiasts - from seasoned players to newcomers - to play and compete online.
About Asmodee
Asmodee is an entertainment leader specialized in boardgames, committed to bringing people together through great games and amazing stories. Thanks to its global and passionate workforce of over 2,500 people, players around the world enjoy one of the largest board game IP catalogs with CATAN, Ticket to Ride, Dobble/Spot it!, Exploding Kittens and 365 more across a variety of digital and physical platforms. Headquartered in France (Guyancourt), Asmodee operates across Europe, North America, South America and Asia. Asmodee is a part of the Embracer Group AB, which is publicly listed on Nasdaq Stockholm under the ticker EMBRAC B. (EMBRAC B).
For more information : https://corporate.asmodee.com/