InvestGame team is proud to share with you our Global Gaming Deals Activity Report H1’22.
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The first half of 2022 may be described as somewhat contradictory: Gaming industry has started out strong and brought some new records in the investment activity, but it has also seen market’s growth correction and weak financials results of many gaming comps in Q2’22. In addition to the macroeconomic challenges, the market has been largely impacted by post-pandemic performance lagging, multiple release dates shifts, and post-IDFA adaptation.
Overall, H1’22 have seen 455 closed deals with the total deal value of $43.3B, or $113.6B including announced but not yet closed deals — a new record for the industry, beating last full year’s total closed and announced deal value of $80.4B.
- M&A activity in H1’22 has been characterized by the decreasing number of deals (–21% YoY), with only 126 closed deals (vs. 159 deals in H1’21) and growing deal value (+36% YoY) which reached $31.1B, excluding the announced deals (e.g., the acquisition of Activision Blizzard by Microsoft for $68.7. It should be noted, however, that almost 71% of the deal value in H1’22 was contributed by 5 mega-deals, including Zynga, Asmodee, Nintendo, Playtika, and Sumo Group.
- Private deals continue breaking the records — almost $8B value raised across 316 deals in H1’22, highlighting strong investors’ firmness in Gaming business even during the current turbulent times. 34% of all Private deals total value came from Blockchain- associated placements ($2.7B across 163 deals) in comparison to 10% in H1’21 ($489m), and 2% in H1’20 ($22m).
- Public markets continue to perform poorly since the beginning of 2022, demonstrating a 4x shrink in the deal value ($4.3B vs. $17.1B) and a 4x decrease in the number of transactions (13 vs. 56), compared to H1’21.
For the first time in our Report, we have also collected data about the founders of the companies that took part in the closed deals in the context of gender diversity. Across 436 companies, 88% of all founders are men. Mixed genders are holding second place with 10% (43 companies). Women-led companies took third place, with 3% in 11 companies.