Anyone with a more-than-casual interest in League of Legends almost surely knows about Porofessor and League of Graphs. The sites are indispensable tools for the passionate player, stats aggregators that show who's winning what, when, where, and with which League champion. What those League-heads might not know was that the two sites, and their associated Legends of Runeterra and Teamfight Tactics versions, were made by one person as the company Wargraphs. That person has now sold the company for a pretty nice paycheck.
The deal was for €50 million, about US $54.6 million at today's rate. It's probably a steal for Wargraphs' Porofessor and League of Graphs, which have some 10 million downloads and 1.25 million daily average users, while the websites have about 4.5 billion page views since their launch. It had a healthy income of about €12.3 million in the fiscal period ending November 30th, 2022.
Wargraphs, the single-employee company run by Jean-Nicolas Mastin out of Paris, now belongs to MOBA Network, a company based in Sweden that "acquires, develops and operates gaming communities for the global gaming market."
"Together with the founder, who will join the M.O.B.A team, we already have plans how to develop the assets further and expand into to new games and markets. With the acquisition, M.O.B.A will add extensive competence and leading in our way of being the home of some the world’s most popular and high quality gaming communities and products," said Björn Mannerqvist, CEO at MOBA Network.
Wargraphs is getting half the money up front and half if it meets certain earnings and growth targets, as Jean-Nicolas Mastin will stay on with MOBA as an employee.
I'm pretty curious about how this will turn out—MOBA Network certainly wants to make the money that Wargraphs is making off of ads, but the secondary goal here is clearly an acquisition of technology. What game are they going to turn these tools towards next?
Great spot, TechCrunch.
