Asmodee has sealed its second major acquisition in a week by agreeing to pay up to €250m for French social and party game publisher ATM Gaming.

The board game giant said buying ATM, the publisher of titles including Speed Bac/Quickstop, Mouton Mouton and Pili Pili, was predicated on social games being “the fastest growing category of the board games market”.

Asmodee expects a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for social games of between 4% and 8% between 2025 and 2030, compared to about 4% for the wider board games market, citing mass market sales research for the US and ‘main European countries’ conducted by Arthur D Little.

ATM has scored rapid success since it was launched in 2018, with Asmodee saying the company has shown particular strength in building an “e-retailer distribution engine”, using advertising, advanced SEO and real-time analytics to help its titles rank highly in online stores such as Amazon.

The company’s standout title, Speed Bac from designer Rémy Wannerbroucq, has sold more than 3 million copies since it was launched in 2024, with about 2 million of those sales coming in 2025 alone.

Speaking in a press conference about the acquisition, Asmodee CEO Thomas Koegler said the fast-paced word game, which has also been published as Slingz, “shows clear potential to become an evergreen”.

Asmodee said the game managed to hold the number one spot in Amazon’s Toys & Games category across four different European countries during both Christmas 2024 and 2025, while other ATM games have also managed to seal high rankings.

Pili Pili, which has sold more than 300,000 copies since its July 2025 launch, was ranked second behind Speed Bac in Amazon’s Toys & Games category in France last Christmas, while Mouton Mouton, which has sold 200,000 copies since being launched last September, was ranked third.

That success has seen ATM grow from four co-founders with backgrounds across companies such as Meta, Deloitte and Johnson & Johnson to a team of more than 40 people, with its net sales CAGR more than doubling between 2023 and 2025 to reach about €34m last year.

Asmodee said it expects ATM to contribute at least €50m in net sales over the 2026/27 financial year, boosted by its new owner’s geographic reach and “know-how in operational efficiency”.

The company has agreed to pay €180m for ATM Gaming on a cash-free and debt-free basis, with another €70m paid in newly-issued Asmodee shares contingent on ATM’s future performance.

ATM is already established across France, Germany, Italy and Spain, Asmodee said, with “emerging” sales in countries including the US and UK, as well as in wider Europe and Latin America.

Koegler said a “key differentiator” for ATM was the company’s strength in e-retail, which has been their primary sales channel over the last three years. He added, “Their expertise in digital marketing and social media will also strengthen our go-to-market capabilities.”

Asmodee has distributed ATM titles since 2019, with about 10% of the company’s current sales made through the Asmodee network – mainly in Italy and Spain.

Koegler said, “Over time we expect to further integrate distribution within Asmodee. Geographically the combination is highly complementary.

“ATM Gaming is strong in Europe, while Exploding Kittens provides a strong foothold in the US. Together this creates a balanced platform with significant expansion potential across both regions, but also beyond.”

Exploding Kittens is among Asmodee’s current heavyweight hits in its party and social games portfolio, alongside other high-selling titles such as Dobble.

Koegler said in the company’s Q2 report last November that Asmodee had seen “good momentum” in its lower price-point products in the US mass market, singling out Exploding Kittens as a particularly strong performer in what he called a “challenging market”.

Expanding Horizons

A month earlier Asmodee continued its reignited expansion strategy by launching a new party games studio, Moodbox Games, as part of a push into the US mass market.

That strategy has seen Asmodee make five acquisitions in the past 12 months – including last week’s buyout of Japon Brand from CMON, anchoring the board game giant’s push into a “currently untapped market” for the company.

Its other recent acquisitions include picking up Zombicide, Cthulhu: Death May Die and Sheriff of Nottingham from CMON, which is attempting to recover from heavy losses over the past couple of years.

Asmodee announced in November 2024 that it was preparing to “reignite” its strategy of buying up smaller board game publishers and distributors, saying at the time that it had a pipeline of more than 20 acquisition opportunities.

The revived M&A process is yet to fully mirror Asmodee’s private equity-fuelled buying spree from the latter half of the 2010s, however, during which it acquired more than 40 companies and IPs.

That heavy expansion included the company adding more than 20 game studios, including Days of Wonder, Fantasy Flight Games, Lookout Games, Catan Studio and Z-Man Games.

Koegler was asked during the company’s quarterly results presentation last month whether the company was ready to make “more meaningful” acquisitions rather than small bolt-on deals.

He said in response, “Without being specific, the activity in the pipeline is in accordance with our plan. The smaller acquisitions are faster. IP acquisitions and asset deals are faster to execute. I’m satisfied.”

Speaking during the ATM acquisition press conference, he said, “Our M&A pipeline remains quite active. We are well positioned to continue executing on our strategy.”

Asmodee posted record sales of €524m during the last quarter of 2025 despite a slump in its US performance, with trading card game earnings in Europe acting as a driving force for the business.

The board game giant’s overall net sales jumped 22.2% across October to December 2025 compared to the same period a year earlier, with the performance of products it distributes for other companies surging more than 50%.

Net sales for games published by Asmodee itself fell almost 13% year-on-year in the quarter, however, weighed down by US net sales slumping 23% to €70.4m.

That drop saw the US fall behind both France and the UK in Q3 in terms of the company’s highest-performing countries for net sales, with France surging 47% year-on-year to over €111m, and the UK growing 41% to €82.7m.

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