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. The post announced 2024 as Supercell’s best year ever, and the numbers make a strong case:
Revenue: €2.8 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. As you can see below, with user acquisition slowing, revenue is following suit.
Brawl Stars record year was fueled by good old marketing. The game team deserves all the praise, but so does the Supercell marketing team!
While Supercell PR focuses on product improvements as the drivers for growth, that’s telling only half of the truth.
In reality, before 2024, Brawl Stars experience a consistent decline in revenue. And it wasn’t a lack of trying. The team experimented with everything from esport to UGC and even went as far as removing gacha - only to put it back in.
In late 2022 you can see the update cadence increase from “once a while” to monthly and then to multiple times a month. In 2023 this increase in content cadence doesn’t seem to have any positive effect on the game’s revenue that continues to slide until late 2023 when the marketing is turned on to 11.
As a conclusion, Brawl Stars requires heavy marketing to keep its record revenues.
Squad Busters: A Swing and a Miss?
“Soft launching the game (Squad Busters) globally and taking more time with it perhaps would have given us an indication of the true audience and what they want — or perhaps not. We will never know.”
Eino Joas, Squad Busters’ Game Lead and former Chief Game Lead of Supercell
Let’s be honest. Squad Busters was Supercell’s biggest launch ever with all the IPs in one single game promoted by the Hollywood A-listers… yet, the game fizzled. The annual letter defends the decision to forgo soft launch, points to positive beta results, the $100M of gross revenue, and Apple/Google backing. Even going as far as hypothesizing whether this was the right decision. But looking at the numbers, it’s clear this one wasn’t quite ready for prime time.
Squad Busters was supposed to be the cherry on the top of Supercell’s record year but it ended up being a fly in the ointment.
To be honest, I too drank the Squad Busters Kool-Aid. Given the success of Brawl Stars, I got sucked in by the hubris. As Kim Nordström writes in his book Up Down Up “There is a level of arrogance that comes with success, a feeling that you are invincible and that you can achieve anything you want.”
Will Squad Busters bounce back? Could be. If they’re successful, not only will Squad Busters be another entry in “games that will be remembered forever,” but Supercell’s Next Chapter reads longer than its last.
Whether this will happen or not will not be due to the lack of tryin’. Supercell has all hands on deck to turn this bust into a boom.
Spark: The Brutal Bootcamp for Game Devs
Supercell knows its new game development is too slow, so enter Spark, a high-stakes incubator designed to fix that. Instead of relying on battle-scarred veterans to come up with the next hit, they’re bringing in hungry new blood to shake things up—classic innovator’s dilemma playbook.
But let’s be real—this ain’t some cozy startup accelerator. It’s a brutal, high-pressure proving ground where only the best survive. Can’t deliver? You’re out. It’s so intense they literally have a psychologist on staff. Some will thrive, others will get crushed under the weight of expectations—because at Supercell, the bar is sky-high.
What’s Missing? The Big Questions for Supercell
Despite the celebratory tone, a few things were glaringly absent:
Where’s Supercell Engine? The company’s proprietary tech should be a game-changer, but it barely gets a mention.
What’s the plan for the North American PC studio launched 4 years ago? After all the fanfare all we get is radio silence on their progress.
Investments. Several times before the annual letter highlighted some of the many investments into game studios the company has made. This year, there were no mentions. In fact, the CEO jabbed at other companies who “will just try to seek to buy them (games) when they get to scale”.
Supercell London. This is a big deal since the long-lasting rule was one-studio-to-rule-them-all. The transformation of Space Ape into Supercell London also meant the departure of founders and the spinning off of their games.
How do they maintain culture while scaling? Ilkka’s famous “world’s least powerful CEO” line is charming, but leadership clearly makes big calls and manages the organization as a product—how does that balance evolve as the company grows?
Looking Ahead: IPO on the Horizon?
Supercell is heading into a defining year. The big wins are undeniable, but the sustainability of their strategy is in question. Marketing costs are sky-high, Squad Busters missed the mark, and their new development approach is still unproven.
The China-risk? Recently Tencent, Supercell’s parent company that owns over 90% of the shares was designated as a Chinese military company by the US. Supercell CEO was asked about this in one of the largest Finnish podcasts and he replied that “Supercell is a fully autonomous company that pays all its taxes to Finland and hosts its data here”. Safe to say these explanations won’t weigh US legislators if they go after Tencent. Afterall, TikTok’s HQ is in Singapore. And Supercell has a real risk of collateral damage in the global trade warfare game.
The China-opportununity! In the worst-case scenario, Tencent’s games will be banned from the US market. This will force the company to divest from its assets. Perhaps the best way to divest from its largest holdings, such as Riot and Supercell, is to IPO the companies. SuperRiot would be one of the largest and most beloved interactive media companies in the world should it go public. Hiring a new CFO sure supports Supercell’s IPO strategy…
With an IPO likely on the horizon, Supercell needs to double down on what it does best—making amazing, lasting games. The industry is watching, and we’re all rooting for them. But let’s not get caught up in the hype—execution is everything.
