AppLovin’s Gaming Portfolio

Yesterday AppLovin announced that it is selling it’s whole gaming portfolio for $900 mil. 🤑 in order to focus only on Ad tech. The buyer was not announced. 🤔 Who could it be? Let’s look closer at the performance of the games portfolio to get some hints 😎

▪️ The ten studios that are being sold are Magic Tavern, Zero Gravity, PeopleFun, Lion Studios, Belka, Zenlife, Clipwire, Leyi, Machine Zone and Athena.
On a surface look, the whole games portfolio did around $50 Mil. in IAP revenue only for last month. This is exactly half 📉 of what it did at its peak in January 2021.
Downloads wise last month there was around 19 Mil. downloads, which is 10 times less compared to its peak in January 2021, which was 190 Mil. 😱 Of course let’s be real, the peak was done during the corona period, which uplifted the whole industry. Revenue stabilized around that $50 Mil. in November 2022 going up and down, but definitely not growing since.

▪️ As many remember, Magic Tavern appeared on the gaming map in 2017 with Matchington Mansion as it got into an UA war with Playrix 😅 Currently it is the biggest contributor to the portfolio revenue with its main title Project Makeover, (top 8 Match 3 game for last month). Even though the company has a San Francisco office, it is mainly based in China, which creates an interesting dynamic in the current environment, as there are not many western companies that own Chinese gaming studios (Ehm, TikTok 😅).

Lastly, Zero Gravity, the 2nd biggest contributor is a traditional casino company with portfolio full of slots games, which could point to companies like Playtika, which already acquired SuperPlay recently. I still think the trail leads probably back to Asia, where the biggest growth is currently happening. What do you think? Would like to hear some hot tips 🔥 in the comments 😎
Data based on Sensor Tower, thanks for the support 🤗