Although there is some debate as to whether the current
decade ends last year or 52 more weeks from now, it still seems appropriate
this week to make a few predictions over the next 10 years.
1.
More
disruption in trade and imports.
This will prove to affect a lot of boardgame publishers, especially
those launching new games via the Kickstarter channel. Since most of them use
China for sourcing the manufacture of their launched games, disruptions in the
channel will greatly affect their logistics and pricing. The industry dodged a
pricing bullet with the delay by the administration of a tariff on boardgaming
(and other related products) imported from China but neither nation has signed
off on even the touted Phase One of an agreement. The president has said he is
in no rush to sign off on an agreement and we could see a delay in one until
after the 2020 election. More concerning than that though, at least to a lot of
experts, is the neutering of the WTO trade courts by America’s decision to
block the appointment of judges to the court, not only under the Trump
administration but also the Obama and Bush ones. This deprives the court of a
quorum, forstalling it from making rulings on trade disputes. Thanks to the
court serving as an impartial referee (although the US argues otherwise and has
made its displeasure known by blocking judge appointments), the last 50+ years
have seen tremendous growth in international trade, aided by the arbitration of
the court, reducing instances of trade wars and allowing multilateral
agreements to flourish. With the projected demise of the court in the next few
years, I would expect to see a return to greater reliance on bilateral
agreements and more instances of stronger economies imposing agreements on
weaker ones.
2.
WOTC
Cancels the Transformers TCG (and Launches Another One). This won’t have a
major imparct on the industry and , although the Transformers TCG proved very
popular on launch in the latter part of
2018 (Google Trends shows a huge
spike in searches for the topic in September 2018), like all of WOTC’s TCG
releases, Pokemon excepted, interest in the game slacked (remember C-23 and
Hecatomb?) within a year and while the game still has collectors and players
(the Highlander and Warlord TCGs both have active online communities, for
example), I doubt we will see more than one additional release through
distribution. However, given WOTC’s track
record, I would expect its development arm to launch another very well designed
TCG with 3-5 years after the demise of the Transformers game.
3.
Continued
Growth of Internet Sales and Brick and Mortar Response. When I questioned my marketing students this past
semester as to what percentage of retail sales currently occurred online, their
guesses ranged from 25% to 70%. The actual figure, as of 2018, was 11% but it
ticked up sharply this year, reaching 14%, with online holiday sales seeing an
increase of some 58% on the Saturday before Christmas over the same day 2018.
Concurrent with, or in response to, this I expect to see even more stores
moving to the retailtainment
model, not only selling games but offering more events beyond the card
tournaments that are a fixture now. More stores will incorporate parties and
food service into their model, even offering alcohol sales and consumption when
local laws allow.
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