The big news, coming as part of the Q&A portion of the call, was Chris Cocks telling an investor that the Spider-Man set later this year will not have Commander decks associated with it. The full quote can be seen here:
“And then Spider-Man, we feel that will do well. Now I think the important thing to note on Spider-Man is that it’s a little bit of a different complexion of a set in terms of what’s incorporated into it. Final Fantasy and Lord of the Rings had Commander decks, which usually constitute a fairly big hunk of a set’s total volume. Spider-Man will be Standard only cards. There won’t be any kind of precon decks, so that will make it a bit smaller.”
I find it interesting that not only will they not be doing Commander precons for the Spider-Man set, but Pro Tour: Edge of Eternities will be taking place 9 weeks after that set releases. That puts the Pro Tour right around the time I would expect the Spider-Man set to be released, which is certainly odd and makes me wonder if the Spider-Man set is going to be a full Standard release or something more similar to what we got with Assassin’s Creed last year. This will be something to keep an eye on as we get deeper into the year.
Beyond the Spider-Man news, Hasbro and Chris Cocks seemed very pleased with how Magic is currently performing. I went through the presentation and listened to the full earnings call to pull out some tidbits.
WotC grew again for the 14th time in 15 years.
2024 almost matched 2023 despite fewer set releases, and “…the MAGIC ecosystem is as healthy and engaged as it has ever been.”
Year over Year increase in active players and Magic-Con attendance, with better than expected demand for “…several tentpole sets including Q4’s release, Foundations”.
They’re very happy with how Secret Lairs are performing, specifically calling out the success of the Marvel Secret Lair as “selling out within minutes”.
In both the presentation and on the earnings call, Chris Cocks talked about how big they expect Final Fantasy to be as a set. As he put it, “Certainly we think Final Fantasy has good chance of taking the crown for the best selling set in history.” As an example of why he feels this way he called out the fact that the LotR Commander precons sold out within a week, but the Final Fantasy precons sold out within an hour.
Finally, they said they expect Magic to reach an even wider audience off the back of the animated Netflix show as well as the live-action TV series.
