Magic: The Gathering‘s collaboration with the Final Fantasy franchise has netted the company solid returns, boasting $200 million in sales – the same amount that Magic’s Lord of the Rings set earned in six months.
The Final Fantasy set of Magic: The Gathering has been breaking records for the company. Its Secret Lair collaboration drops sold out instantly, and following the set’s release, it was nearly impossible to get your hands on these cards. Hell, the set was so popular, it raised the prices of previously released cards that synergised with the Final Fantasy decks.
Needless to say, the set was a smash hit well exceeding expectations. But you don’t have to take it from me, Hasbro’s own Q2 earnings call confirms the set made over $200 million USD ($303,493,000 AUD) in a single day. It took Magic’s previous Lord of the Rings set six months to earn that amount of money.
The same report revealed that Magic: The Gathering’s revenue grew 23% year-over-year thanks to the Final Fantasy release. CEO Chris Cox confirmed that the set had brought in more new players to stores over two weeks than any other set had in 12.
“In terms of Final Fantasy and how it met expectations, I’ll give you a comparison between two of our biggest universe at the onsets. Lord of the Rings took six months to deliver $200,000,000 of revenue,” admitted Cox.
“Final Fantasy took one day. And we left demand on the table. So we couldn’t produce enough. I think we increased production runs on it four times pre release. It was substantially, by many, many very high double digit percentages, ahead of any other production run we’ve ever done.”
Cox also confirmed that while demand for the set has eased a bit, they’re still expecting consumers to pick up the cards well into the future, stating: “We left the market wanting more. And our expectation is there’s going to be a nice long tail of backlist for the product. Likewise, we’re still selling Lord of the Rings product today. So, even though we hit $200,000,000 in December for Lord of the Rings, we sold a substantial percentage of that in the several years following. We expect Final Fantasy to be no different.”
It doesn’t look like Magic: The Gathering is stopping these themed collabs any time soon. The company has announced that a Spider-Man and an Avatar: The Last Airbender set of decks are set to release in September and November later this year. As much as I’m a simp for the Final Fantasy franchise, I’d be mighty surprised if the Avatar decks don’t rack up a similar amount of buzz, if not more.
But, hopefully by then, it’ll be easier to get your hands on your very own Y’shtola commander deck.
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