E3 2020 Impact on Investment/M&A Announcements

When we took over the games investment and M&A data from Digi-Capital, they cautioned tradeshow months could be busy with announcements of investments and M&As. Historically, E3 has been a rally point for some of the largest industry’s announcements. Unlike other tradeshows that switched to a virtual format due to the COVID-19 pandemic, its organizer ESA chose to cancel the event and support a few partners and their industry announcements instead. As its relevancy for video games’ largest showcase had been in question over the past several years with notable exhibitors like Sony and Electronic Arts pulling out in favor of their own showcases, we were curious if E3’s 2020 cancellation along with lockdowns from COVID-19 would yield fewer investment/M&A announcements than previous years.

Since not all transactions have publicly announced details and some large transactions skew the average monthly value, we are focusing on the number or volume of deals since 2015. Excluding IPO and Post-IPO Equity raises, we tracked 29 investments in June 2020 which was the 5th highest volume among our review of 66 individual months. In fact, the volume of deals in H1 2020 was 40% higher than H1 2019. Continue reading…