As a tabletop game creator, one of the most important things to keep in mind when creating your game is the potential profit margin.

Even if your board game is a labor of love rather than a commercial venture, it needs to be profitable (or, at least able to break even) in order for you to continue selling it and reaching your target audience. No creator can afford to continually lose money on a game that earns a loss instead of being profitable. Because of this, understanding how profitable board games typically are and what you should aim for are really important when you’re working out how to price and promote your game.

A typical board game profit margin depends on your marketing and distribution channels.

If you’re a creating your game for Kickstarter or Gamefound, you’ll want to aim for a 20-30% profit margin for landed costs. 

If you’re selling your game on Amazon or through retailers, a profit margin of 10-15% is a good target. (These platforms involve more fees, but give you access to a larger audience.)

This means that in general, you should expect to keep $10-30 out of every $100 spent on your game as profit. You can use this profit to experiment with new game ideas, create an expansion for your game, develop new titles, or just enjoy your life while you create your game as a hobby, project or business.

However, just because the average profit margin for a game is 10-30%, this does not mean you can spend 70+% of your budget on manufacturing your game. There are lots of costs that go into this target 10-30% profit margin (as we’ve discussed in our guide to the 5x rule) and you’ll need to understand them all to price your game effectively and make your game a viable product.

We’ve gone into more detail about all of this below and shared we the industry considers to be the normal profit margins for board games.

Board Game Profit Margin for Game Creators

• There’s no precise average profit margin for a board game. However, in general, if you manufacture your game and sell it yourself it via Kickstarter or a platform like Amazon, you should aim for a profit margin of around 10-30% in order to be competitive in the market and commercially viable.

• Pricing your game too low can make it difficult or impossible to profit. This is bad even if your game isn’t an explicitly commercial venture, as lack of profits means you won’t be able to do a second print run or market your game effectively. It also makes it very difficult to create any new games or expansions.

• Your game will not market itself. When you’re pricing your game, you need to account for money spent on promotions and advertising.

• Keep in mind that your profit margin will be lower if you’re manufacturing your game in small quantities. The larger your order, the less your game will cost per unit to manufacture, hence a higher profit margin.

• If you need help working out how to price your game, what profit margin to aim for, or with manufacturing your game, feel free to contact us and we can answer your questions.

What is a Normal Board Game Profit Margin?

There’s no “normal” profit margin for a game, but as per the 5x rule, aiming for 20% of your game’s cost to go into profits (or a development budget, if you plan to grow your board game business) is a good practice. Games that are priced to generate sales with a 20% profit margin once all other costs are factored in are usually commercially healthy and, provided they get good word of mouth, able to sell well and find an audience.

Costs Involved in Making and Selling Your Game

Like we covered in our 5x rule guide, your game should be priced at approximately five times its landed cost in order to generate a profit. There are five components that make up this cost, each of which should account for 20% of your game’s total price. For example, a game with a price of $25 should be broken down as per the table below: