It was first reported back in May that Tencent, one of the largest Internet corporations wanted to become a major stakeholder of Supercell by buying it from SoftBank. Supercell is widely known for their mobile games such as, Clash of Clans and the real-time multiplayer, Clash Royale. It is now finally confirmed that Tencent and its partners will pay $8.6 billion to Japanese company, SoftBank to buy an 84.3 percent stake in Supercell. This will now put the Finnish game maker’s value at $10.2 billion. As for the rest of the shares, they will continue to be held by Supercell’s staff.
The Chinese Internet giant, Tencent has said that it will pay the sum for Supercell in three installments adding that the game-maker’s management will maintain operational independence and that it will continue to be based in Helsinki, Finland. SoftBank first bought a 51 percent stake in the Finnish gaming company for $1.53 billion in 2013. Last year, SoftBank raised its stake to 73 percent but didn’t disclose the price of the transaction. Supercell was roughly valued to be $5.25 billion last year. The announcement came as SoftBank tries to improve it’s balance sheet as the company currently has debts amounting to a huge sum of $80 billion. About one-third of it’s debt is tied to US-based mobile carrier, Sprint which SoftBank acquired for $16 billion. SoftBank has also said it would be selling $7.9 billion worth of it’s Alibaba shares in a bid to clear it’s debts.
Tencent’s acquirement of Supercell will enable the company to expand it’s hold in the gaming market. Tencent is already a leader in personal-computers games and will soon become a leader in mobile gaming. This is very possible as Tencent owns Riot’s Games, the studio behind League of Legends, which was the highest grossing PC game of 2015, raking in $1.63 billion. Supercell on the other hand, made $1.35 billion from Clash of Clans since it’s inception, making it the world’s highest grossing mobile game.
Supercell currently has four titles to it’s name which are, Clash of Clans, Hay Day, Boom Beach and it’s latest game, Clash Royale. A quick check on the Play Store shows that each title has at least 50 million downloads, with Clash of Clans and Hay Day reaching over a 100 million downloads. According to the game maker, 100 million players play these games on a daily basis.