Tencent buys Supercell for $8.6 billion

As we started to spend more time getting to know potential strategic partners, it became apparent to us that a partnership with Tencent would secure everything that has made Supercell a success, while also enabling us to take a few pretty big leaps on this journey I mentioned above. Here's why:

First, we have agreed with Tencent that Supercell will continue to be operationally independent, exactly as it was under SoftBank's ownership. They understand that our unique culture of small and independent teams (or "cells" as we call them) is what makes Supercell. We want Supercell to continue to be the world's best place for creative people to create games. Also, our headquarters will stay in Helsinki and we will pay our taxes in Finland. All of this is very important for us.

Second, China is home to more gamers than any other country. Tencent's platforms reach around a billion users (yes, a billion!). And, they have around 300 million unique users playing games on their platforms. What this means for us is that together with Tencent, we can bring our games to so many more players. Also, their social platforms offer many new possibilities for our games, particularly for social play. All of this is very exciting!

Third, Tencent's people seem to love games as much as we do. In fact, in one of my meetings with Martin (their President), he had just dropped out from Clash Royale global top-100 players, and it was almost impossible to get his focus back to the topics we had to discuss… talk about being passionate about games! J On a more serious note, Tencent has built a hugely successful partnership with Riot Games, a team we greatly admire and that has inspired us over the years in so many ways. Now we'll have an excuse to call Riot and talk shop more often!

And fourth, this deal enables us to keep Supercell privately held. That is a better match with our small size and unique culture than being a public company where our concern would be the pressure from financial markets to think short term. However, while enabling us to stay private, the partnership with Tencent provides us with some of the benefits of being public: as part of this transaction, our employees will be able to sell their shares in Supercell over time (everyone at Supercell is an owner). The total equity value of $10.2 billion dollars also recognizes the value of the phenomenal company that our people have built.

Finally, I would like to thank a few people (because I am Finnish I will keep this short :)

supercell.com