Looking at Flash Sponsorship Statistics

Flash Game License recently introduced a page that gives their monthly sales data.  They give a lot of numbers for the two types of revenue you can get through FGL: Sponsorships as well as licenses – which are custom versions of  games sold to websites.  These do not cover all the money being spent on flash games, but it can give some insight as to how and where money is going

Caveats

The data FGL has given only covers the past year.  That’s not a very long time as far as statistics go.  I’m going to compare the last half of 2008 (July to December) to the first half of 2009 (January to June).  When I say 2008 or 2009, this is what I’m referring to.  Other forums of revenue like ads, micro-payments, as well as money not spent using Flash Game License etc. are not included.  According to this MochiMedia article, about 50% of flash developers utilize sponsorships and 40% use licensing.  This is the audience this data pertains to.

Sponsorship Data

The number of sponsorships given in 2008 was 421 and went up to 526 in 2009.  The average price of a sponsored game rose 20% to $1,397 in 2009 from $1,166 in 2008.  Sponsors are spending more on game sponsorships and sponsoring more games.  This is good, but it should be mentioned that it seems that the amount of work required to make a sponsorable game is also going up.

Licenses

In contract to Sponsorships, The average price of Game Shop Sales has gone up, but the amount bought has gone down.  156 Sales were made in 2008 vs. 118 in 2009, a drop of 25%.  But, the amount spent on licenses has risen 43% from an average buy of $294 in 2008 to $420 in 2009. The total amount spent on Licenses was $33.5k in 2008 and $49.5k in 2009, a 48% increase – this stays in line with the with the increases in sponsorship.

While this is a large increase, it’s mostly caused by January 2009 which had close to $20k in sales before dropping back to normal. I don’t know who went on a spending spree, but they were paying top dollar.

I need to point out that many of the bigger portals do not use Flash Game License to buy licenses.  Big Fish Games licenses a new flash game every day.  They pay a flat rate of $400, which is $73,000 every 6 months.  That’s more than all the license sales on FGL just from one major portal.  This is because many portals either have the clout where they can rely on developers submitting their game directly or they only license games that have become popular on other websites and can contact the developers directly.

Sponsorship vs. Licenses

The percentage of money spent on Licenses vs. Sponsorships on Flash Game License remains about the same during both periods. 94% is spent in sponsorships, 6% in licenses.  As stated above, the amount of money in licenses is much more than just what goes through Flash Game License, so the money to be made  is not as lethargic as it first seems.

Also, did you notice that whenever there is a drop in sponsorships, there is bump in licenses?

Flash Game License

Flash Game License asks for a donation of 10% of the sales made on their site.  This means they’ve raked in $150k in the past year.  Before asking if you can dive into their Scrooge McDuck money vault, this is before taxes.  After that, bandwidth costs, staff, credit card fees, and people who don’t pay their 10% all take their cut.

Things are looking good in the long term for them. Some big names have started to use the service like Hero Interactive, King, and Gaming Your Way. Plus, the amount of money spent on FGL is up about 50% in just six months.  If you’re selling FGL stock, I’m looking to buy!

What next

A big problem with the two sets of data I’m comparing in this post is that they are from different times in the year.  Events like Christmas only show up in one of the data sets  and that limits how I can compare them.  After the next six months of data comes in, this should be easier.  I’d love to see how spread out the distribution of sponsorship money is, but that would require numbers that Flash Game License is unlikely to provide. There is also data that is broken down into different genres – I may take a look at it, but don’t expect anything in depth.

Thanks go out to Flash Game License.  It’s very rare for a company to release this kind of information and I wish I had it a year ago.

Here’s the Excel File I created for this.  worksheet