Evaluating entry into the trading card games segment

Context

Trading card games were attracting interest internally, and entry would have required real investment. There was no shared view of how large the segment was, how strong the incumbents were, or whether the audience overlapped with existing players.

The discussion was running on conviction. That is a reasonable place to start and a difficult place to commit capital from.

Mandate

Assess the trading card games segment and give leadership a structured basis on which to approve or decline entry.

Approach

The work ran as two streams. Strategic partner interviews gathered direct input from people who knew the segment, including operators, players already active in trading card games, and internal publishing and product teams.

Signals intelligence covered category sizing, competitive analysis, product positioning and community dynamics, built from public data on activity, spending and community size.

Reading the two streams together let each check the other. Where the interviews and the signal data disagreed, the difference was investigated instead of averaged out. The sizing was presented as a range rather than a single figure, with the assumptions behind each case written down.