Company Profile: Konami

Taking the king of games crown

Boasting a rich heritage and a hugely engaged fanbase, the manga franchise Yu-Gi-Oh! continues to make waves across on-demand streaming services, mobile gaming and consumer products categories, including the licensed Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG developed and published by Konami. Rachael Simpson-Jones spoke to Dom Galizia, senior marketing manager, and Enrico Tassinari, senior sales manager, at Konami Digital Entertainment B.V., about the importance of the Yu-Gi-Oh! community, its approach to marketing and events, and why 2021 is such an exciting year for retailers to get on board.

Enrico Tassinari

Much like Yu-Gi-Oh!, Konami has been on the scene for more than 50 years. A historic Japanese company, Konami’s background is firmly rooted in development, publication and manufacture of video games – among them Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, Dance Dance Revolution and Castlevania – as well as trading card games. To say Konami’s Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG has been a success would be something of an understatement when you consider that over 20b cards have been sold to date globally, but the company isn’t resting on its laurels, and ambitious plans are in place for this year that will propel the game to even loftier heights.

“Yu-Gi-Oh! has been a great fit for Konami ever since it was granted the licence by Shueisha, an established Japanese publisher, about 20 years ago,” explains Enrico Tassinari. “A global business, Konami’s strength in the publishing arena is only getting stronger by the day, and Konami Digital Entertainment B.V., which manages Europe, the Middle East and Oceania, is in its third consecutive year of growth across all markets. Despite the pandemic, lockdowns, and retail disruption, the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG is in a very strong position coming into 2021. Commercial TCG rankings put Yu-Gi-Oh! in third place, just behind Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering, which is an achievement in itself. When you factor in how many TCGs fail to go the distance in the marketplace, dropping off the radar after just a couple of years despite huge marketing outlays, this makes it all the more impressive that the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG has remained a category leader for decades. Maybe we don’t make as much noise as other TCGs I’ve mentioned, but Yu-Gi-Oh! is here, has been here for a long time, and will be here for years to come.”

The strong performance of the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG, particularly during the past year, is a combination of several factors. First and foremost, Dom and Enrico explain, the pandemic put expendable income

into the pockets of many consumers. Denied other options for entertainment, a lot of this went on hobbies. We’ve seen this in toy categories such as Construction and Games & Puzzles, which includes Trading Card Games; it seems collectors and players have been seizing the opportunity to buy new decks or expansion packs to complement existing ones. The strength of the products themselves is also a major factor in the growing demand for Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG decks, Dom adds. During the eight years he’s been with Konami, product development and quality has improved, as has the collectability of products, with Konami constantly working to better its proposition for fans and retailers alike.

“On the digital side of things, we’ve been engaging with our fanbase, whether that be via our SNS [Social Networking Services] accounts or enticing people to online gaming events,” says Dom. “For the past 12 months or so, we’ve tried to replicate everything we would usually do in terms of physical events using online events instead. It’s not a like-for-like replacement; we’ve had to radically adapt our events to the climate we were facing, but we have managed to implement certain activities such as our Remote Duel programme. This ongoing programme allows Yu-Gi-Oh! fans to play online using their physical cards, with a proper tournament policy in place, via their local retailer in most cases. Our players are hugely social in nature and can be found discussing our games on forum sites like Reddit and Discord, places they’ve congregated during the pandemic to keep in touch. Remote Duel is an excellent example of how Konami’s digital platforms have been created to mirror the spirit of physical events, and they’ve made a huge contribution to continued fan engagement. At its core, our focus has been on keeping lines of communication open with players about Yu-Gi-Oh!, the TCG, and the cards and products themselves, and it’s an approach that’s worked incredibly well.”

The Konami business model means fans can look forward to new product releases every two or three weeks. Awareness of upcoming product launches among players and collectors is high thanks to consistent targeted messaging via social media platforms and the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG website (www. yugioh-card.com). Retailers stocking the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG and collectible items can expect to welcome the same consumers back time and again, all in search of constantly refreshed, rotating product lines. For retailers wanting to drive repeat footfall and purchase following a year of severely disrupted sales, trading card games like Yu-Gi-Oh!, which come complete with a passionate fanbase eager to spend their money on collectible new cards week after week, are a dream come true. Enrico adds: “The fans know what they want, when it is released and where to buy it, and retailers have the opportunity to become destination stores for this TCG. Stocking our products would naturally drive footfall to stores; on the run up to each release, Dom and his team will build the hype in various ways, so consumers arrive at retailers very organically.”

As Dom explains, Konami runs numerous events and activities as part of the wider Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG ecosystem and to support new product releases, with the fan community at the heart of all celebrations. Premiere events, for example, give fans the chance to obtain exclusive items and are always very well attended. Konami’s SNS accounts have seen follower numbers soar in the past few years, as fans seek increasing connections with their favourite properties. Influencers and content creators have become a bigger part of the marketing mix too, raising the profile of the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG and the events on offer. For Dom, Konami’s events programme is second to none, as is the level of communication with the YuGi-Oh! TCG community, and as a result, products sell out consistently - and have done for a couple of years.

Konami supports its retail partners with a range of in-store marketing materials, including eye-catching posters and banners that attract the attention of shoppers. Many of these form part of the company’s specialist Official Tournament Store (OTS) programme. Established around five years ago following a successful pilot in Germany, the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG’s current biggest market, the programme has been gradually applied to other markets including the UK, Italy, Spain, France, New Zealand and Australia. Participating stores work directly with Konami on official events which grant them access to specific materials such as premium POS displays, game mats and deck boxes that fans are particularly eager to get their hands on.

“We encourage our OTS programme partners to run in-store activities weekly,” Dom adds. “It’s worth noting that pre-pandemic, players weren’t visiting their local OTS to play once a week; they were going two, perhaps three times a week, maybe even more. These stores pass us tournament data, and this data shows them, as well as us, that our OTS relationships are flourishing. The more tournaments they hold, and the more data they pass us, the more marketing assets and products we can supply to our OTS partners to keep driving that momentum.”

Konami is also building on its recently instigated Flagship Store initiative, which Dom calls the pinnacle of the OTS programme. Flagship retailers benefit from special levels of support; Konami promotes the experience each location offers to the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG community, including cultural or local interest information on the store’s host town or city and an overview of the in-store tournament experience. The Flagship programme will continue to grow in the coming months, fuelled by the demand for destination stores in other countries, particularly Germany, where, prepandemic, players gathered five or six times a week to take part in tournaments with their peers. At the time of writing, Konami was on the verge of selecting its UK Flagship Stores, with plenty of interest from retailers in being granted Flagship status. The company is careful to select stores based on tangible tournament data that is analysed by the Organised Play Team, which specifically monitors ongoing event activities. Dom explains: “We started the Flagship programme about six months ago due to the fact we had so many high-performing OTS partners; we had to offer another carrot, so to speak. At these Flagship Stores, the majority of sales are from trading card games, of which Yu-Gi-Oh! is a substantial part, so interest from retailers in securing this status for themselves is very high.”

Enrico is also keen to highlight that while OTS and Flagship locations tend to be more specialist hobby stores, mass-market retailers also stand to benefit from Konami’s continued efforts to drive Yu-GiOh! TCG players to retail destinations. Regardless of whether they hold OTS status, stockists of the products will be tapping into this vast community, all of whom are fervently seeking the latest launches at stores across the country, month after month, irrespective of where they then attend tournaments to play with them. As Enrico highlights, the Konami/ Yu-Gi-Oh! model provides something of a snowball effect; more product means more purchases, more purchases mean more players, more players mean more tournaments, and so the entire ecosystem grows. Players can even enjoy Yu-Gi-Oh! on their mobile phone if physical play isn’t an option, increasing accessibility yet further. With the TCG going from strength to strength, one of Dom’s current focuses is on tempting back lapsed players, something that has become easier in recent months due to the increased demand

Dom Galizia

for retro and nostalgic toys and games from kidult players and collectors. New players, meanwhile, are arriving at the Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG via on-demand streaming services such as Netflix and Crunchyroll; the former is apparently very keen to secure the rest of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime slate following the hugely positive reception to the content it currently has available to stream. To keep drawing old, new and relapsed players in, web marketing is planned across all Konami’s SNS accounts (Facebook, Instagram, Snap Chat etc.) to support almost all products this year, though with so many new releases in the pipeline, and many of those selling out before they even hit retailer’s shelves, it’s simply not possible to cover everything. As mentioned earlier on, content creators and influencers are also on board. This form of marketing has become a substantial part of Konami’s profiling. Creators are granted early access to products and unique, needto-know information on certain rare and highly collectible cards that can be shared with viewers, ramping up the hype surrounding each release and ensuring that player knowledge of exactly what’s coming is kept consistently high.

“I’m really proud of how we’re approaching the content creator space, and it’s local implementation,” Dom tells me. “The French market in particular finds this type of marketing very successful, and the German market is picking up pace rapidly. Rather than opting purely for those with the highest number of followers, we’re working with a varied scale of influencers and creators, building up smaller ones with between 2,000 and 5,000 followers. We’re seeing follower numbers for these creators grow organically. In Spain, for example, a market we were particularly interested in targeting, we’ve seen our 10 chosen influencers grow their numbers exponentially. Collaboration with influencers and content creators is not a new thing for Konami; this was led by our results in the French market, where we saw this type of marketing really take off. We’ve been progressing things in the last two or three years, but the pandemic accelerated this even further. We’re working with many more new influencers than we were before.”

With many non-essential UK retailers now open to customers once again, Konami views physical instore shopping, as well as events later in the year, as one of its biggest areas for growth this year. Enrico and Dom are clearly excited to pick back up on the plans that had to be shelved in early 2020 due to the pandemic, and to explore new partnerships with retailers including department stores and bookstores, alongside toy and hobby specialists. At the same time, they are aware that it remains to be seen what the ‘new normal’ will be once all restrictions have been lifted. ‘Uncertainty’ is a word that has been bandied around a lot in recent months, but there’s a good reason for that – none of us knows what the post-Covid retail landscape looks like.

“In lockdown, we saw more people than ever playing games including TCG’s like Yu-Gi-Oh!, and gaming became really quite cool again,” notes Enrico. “Now though, will consumers want to go out and spend their leisure time a different way? It will be interesting to see what will happen next, what footfall into shops will be like, and how international travel will evolve throughout the year. Whatever happens, our Q1 will be very strong indeed and summer tends to be excellent for us as well. We have strong plans for the rest of the year which will include our entire pre-pandemic approach – launches, tournaments and community engagement drives - and our Yu-GiOh! TCG community is more committed than ever. Konami has the knowledge, experience, products and investments needed to drive footfall into stores, and we’re looking forward to working with our retail partners to ensure we all have a very good year, despite the uncertainty that lies ahead.”

Dom interjects at this point, keen to reiterate the hugely social nature of Yu-Gi-Oh! TCG players. Throughout the pandemic, he tells me, players have been just as keen as always to talk about their Yu-GiOh! TCG decks, their new cards, and the themes they are playing, which is why initiatives such as Remote Duel have been so incredibly successful. When destination stores are open once more, Yu-Gi-Oh! players will be right there, more eager than ever to buy products and play games after a year without physical tournaments and disrupted in-store shopping experiences. While digital events have certainly helped fill a void, the focus is now shifting back to prestigious in-person experiences that, try as one might, just cannot be replaced.

“We are the market leader in TCG events, and we are ready to offer our players an experience that will bring Yu-Gi-Oh! back into the physical retail space with a bang,” comments Dom. “It’s a really exciting time to be working with Konami, that’s for sure.”

Readers wanting to find out more about working with Konami are advised to email

eu-marketingsupport@konami.com.