Supercell's Record Year: Crushing It, But At What Cost?

Written by Michail Katkoff , founder of Deconstructor of Fun, a games industry veteran of 15 years, and a self-diagnosed Supercell fanboy. Supercell’s founder and CEO Ilkka Paananen dropped his annual blog post , and let’s be honest—it’s a masterclass in PR. 8 billion (+77% YoY) EBITDA: €876 million (+78% YoY) Monthly Active Users: 300 million, the highest since 2014 This is a massive turnaround from 2023 when Supercell fell out of the top 10 mobile publishers.

A true wake-up call to the company that most of us consider the Pixar of gaming. So let’s break it down—how did they pull this off, and what does it mean for the future? Watch the short clip below from our weekly podcast show where we break down the wins, risks, and big unanswered questions behind Supercell’s biggest year yet.

Receive an extra super bonus if you subscribe to our YouTube channel. The Big Wins: Smart Moves and Big Spending Supercell’s best year ever can be deconstructed with the single chart below. As revenues shoot up, so do the costs.

Such a massive increase in costs can only be attributed to marketing spend . This is further supported by the rapid increase in downloads. More importantly, the investment into user acquisition has been profitable at large.

This as can be seen in the increase of earnings despite the increase in costs. Supercell’s growth can be credited to two major plays: Revenue Driver # 1Grow Live Ops Team Sizes  The company decided to evolve its culture to serve the players better. This meant unlocking the team size and not being afraid of processes or experts in middle management roles, such as Producers and Product Managers.

Revenue Driver # 2 Increase Marketing Spend  Reaching record revenues meant also reaching record expenditures. Supercell acquired players like never before in 2024 - both with brand collaborations and good old user acquisition campaigns. Growth = Bigger Teams + Bigger Marketing Budgets The formula above works only on games that have excellent retention and monetization metrics.

That's 5 out of 6 games in Supercell's portfolio currently. But here’s the real question: is this sustainable, or just an expensive short-term boost? It’s also interesting why the blog post failed to mention the word “marketing” even once.

Brawl Stars: What Happens When the Marketing Slows? Brawl Stars has been the success story of 2024, but let’s call it what it is—the game’s growth was fueled by heavy marketing.   Brawl Stars record year was fueled by good old marketing.

The game team deserves all the praise, but so does the Supercell marketing team!   In reality, before 2024, Brawl Stars experience a consistent decline in revenue. And it wasn’t a lack of trying.