Gaming is big business these days. It’s also competitive. More than 500 mobile games are launched each week around the world. With 350 million gamers playing 318 mobile games, iCandy (ASX: ICI) is one game developer that knows how to stand out from the crowd.

Diversity is key for iCandy. The gaming company has three business divisions; mobile game development, game publishing for third parties, and the most recent addition, esports. 

Thanks to licensing agreements with some of the world’s most recognisable brands like Garfield, Astro Boy and Doraemon, iCandy has a huge suite of mobile games that can draw a crowd. They have just released one of their most anticipated games – Masketeers: Idle Has Fallen. On Monday 12th of October, the company reported that Masketeers generated a revenue of A$92,000 in its first 5 days since launch. This translates to an annualised revenue of more than $7mil, a significant increase from their current revenue base.

Crab War is one of iCandy’s most successful games. Since its launch in 2016, it has had 6 million installs and generated more than $2 million in revenue through in-app purchases and advertising.

iCandy also publishes and cross promotes games for third party developers in exchange for a 30% to 50% revenue share. As iCandy doesn’t have to invest in the game development costs, the publishing division is a high ROI, revenue driver for the company.

This business model has set iCandy up to invest into one of the biggest growth areas for gaming, e-sports.

The move follows cost-cutting initiatives across the miner’s operations, and a board reset which will see Pure Metals owner Linda Lau join the team of directors.

iCandy owns a 23% stake in ESPL, a cloud-based e-sports platform available in 12 countries across Asia, Latin America and Europe. It allows e-sports tournaments to be organised for some of the biggest names in gaming including Call of Duty.

“E-sport is a very interesting area to watch out for. It’s probably the biggest sport on the planet now, including most traditional sports. In North America last year, the biggest e-sport event was watched by 100 million people, compared to the biggest conventional sport which was watched by maybe about 5 million people,” said Chairman of iCandy, Kin Wai Lau in last week’s ‘Reach Markets – Meet the CEO webcast’. “It’s gaining lots of traction with the competitive gamer community,” he added.

iCandy is now moving into the next major opportunity – the Chinese market.

China is the world’s largest gaming market with 619.5 million players, generating $23 billion in mobile game revenue. 

“We’ve traditionally not been looking at that market as it’s different in terms of regulatory requirements and market base. That has changed recently. We’ve just signed on with a game publisher part of AliBaba Group. That has given us the ability to launch into the Chinese market,” said Kin Wai Lau.

Last week iCandy’s Chairman Kin Wai Lau joined us for our ‘Meet The CEO’ Live Investor Briefing. You can watch a recording of the session below, or you can click here to book into our next ‘Meet the CEOs ‘ session. We will be joined by the CEOs of (ASX: TD1) TALi Digital Limited, (ASX: TNT) Tesserent Limited and (ASX: ATX) Amplia Therapeutics.

The ‘Reach – Meet the CEOs’ webcasts are a great way to hear directly from the CEOs of fast growing Australian businesses. You will get valuable insights to their industries and companies future prospects.

Meet the CEOs – Event Details:

Date:       Wednesday 21 October Time:      12 pm AEDT Format:   Online, 3 x 15-minute presentations

This is a free event. Click here to book your spot.