Hasbro entered the back half of 2026 with momentum behind Wizards of the Coast and Digital Gaming, improving Consumer Products sales, and a clearer picture of where the company intends to place its biggest bets.
As reported this morning, Hasbro’s second quarter revenue increased 16% year over year, led by 27% growth in Wizards and Digital Gaming and a 5% increase in Consumer Products. Magic: The Gathering revenue surged 32%, with the brand topping $500 million in quarterly revenue for the first time in its history.
Following the company’s earnings call, Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks spoke exclusively with The Toy Book about what’s driving the business — and where it goes next.
For Cocks, one challenge surrounding Magic is that the scale and staying power of the trading card game can be difficult for people outside its community to fully grasp.
“I don’t think many of our typical investors are Magic players,” Cocks says, noting that outsiders sometimes view the game as niche simply because they do not personally encounter it. “‘Who plays this? It’s not in my game closet,’ they often say. It’s almost like we get into this uncanny valley of trying to take them through the mechanics, trading, and how the concept of a trading card game even works.”
Cocks argues that Magic’s complexity is central to its longevity.
“The complexity of it and the depth of it is the feature, not a bug of the game,” he says.
He compares the Magic’s depth to chess, with an added variable: Players effectively bring their own pieces to the board through deck construction.
The larger message, he says, is that understanding every mechanic is not necessary to understand the business, and that, as he shared with analysts on this morning’s earnings call, Magic deserves to be viewed through the same lens as franchises like Pokémon, EA Sports, World of Warcraft, and Minecraft.
“You don’t have to play the game to appreciate it as an investment,” Cocks says. “It’s a big game. It’s got a broad base. It’s growing, its fundamentals are strong.”
While Magic has dominated much of the Wizards conversation this year, Cocks also sees Dungeons & Dragons evolving beyond its traditional publishing model.
He points to Maps, the virtual tabletop functionality within D&D Beyond, as an increasingly important “stealth power feature” of the platform. Designed to simplify digital tabletop play through a browser-based experience, Maps can bring imagery, maps, and collaborative play together without requiring players to navigate the complexity historically associated with virtual tabletop systems.
Cocks, a self-professed “TTRPG nerd” (that’s “Tabletop Role-playing Game,” for those who’ve never experienced a campaign), says the D&D team is also “thinking beyond the book” as it considers how content can be delivered more continuously through D&D Beyond.
The model could increasingly resemble the modular roots of D&D from the ‘70s and ‘80s, with shorter adventures expanding an ongoing campaign piece by piece. Digital distribution now creates an opportunity to deliver that type of supplemental content more frequently alongside — or independently from — major book releases.
At the same time, Hasbro is narrowing the scope of what it intends to build internally in Digital Gaming.
The company recorded a $56 million impairment in Q2 tied to its refocused Digital Games portfolio for 2028 and beyond. Cocks says the portfolio review centered on a fundamental question: What can Hasbro uniquely do — and where can it be among the best in the world?
“We’ve determined that that’s really TCGs and role-playing games,” he says.
That decision has consequences for projects outside those areas. Unannounced projects in early stages of development — including games spanning action, adventure, and strategy — faced increased scrutiny.
Rather than attempting to build every type of game internally, Hasbro plans to concentrate its internal talent, technology, and infrastructure around deep RPG and TCG experiences while relying more heavily on external partners for other genres.
“We work with over 1,000 partners across all of our different iterations of licensing and dozens and dozens of partners inside of digital,” Cocks explains. “We can find people who can do the action games, who can do the stealth games, who can do the adventure games, who can do the casual mobile games; people who, frankly, are better than us at it. So let’s lean into them on those. That’s what went into the whole process, and what the impairment was spawned by.”
The same focus on core strengths is influencing Hasbro’s Consumer Products strategy, but with an eye toward categories where the company has room to expand.
Amid continued industry growth in blind-box collectibles, sensory products, and other lower-priced, multi-purchase formats, Cocks says Hasbro intends to become more active in adjacent spaces.
The recently revealed Butts on Things collaboration is one signal of that direction.
Hasbro, Cocks notes, already has decades of experience with randomized, sealed-pack products through Magic: The Gathering. That expertise fits into the company’s broader GEM² strategy — Gamified, Entertainment-Driven, Multi-Purchase, Multi-Generational.
“You’re going to see a lot more accessible price collectibles from us,” Cocks says.
Older consumers will also remain an increasingly important part of the equation.
Hasbro is developing more aged-up collaborations tied to properties including Harry Potter, Voltron, The Legend of Zelda, Marvel, and Star Wars. While many of those brands continue to reach kids, Cocks says their strongest opportunity can often sit with fans ages 13 and older.
Hasbro reported growth across Star Wars in the first half of the year, though retail performance has varied across individual products and segments. Asked specifically about softer retail reports surrounding merchandise tied to The Mandalorian and Grogu, Cocks pointed to the collector business as a source of strength.
For Star Wars, he says Hasbro is seeing “solid demand” from collectors, alongside “pretty good” sales of lightsabers for kids.
“On the other side of the Mouse House,” Marvel, he notes, is showing significant momentum ahead of upcoming theatrical releases. Cocks says Spider-Man-related products are already posting large double-digit increases, and Spider-Man: Brand New Day doesn’t even open until July 30. “Typically, a Spider-Man movie just prints demand for toys,” he says. “And the Avengers: Doomsday trailer just dropped, and that’s going to be really popular with multiple audiences. We’re very pleased by our overall Disney partnership.”
Taken together, the strategy emerging from Hasbro’s second quarter is one of sharper specialization, in which the company builds on its strengths while leaning on those of its partners.
On retail shelves, expect that strategy to show up in more places, with collectible products built around lower price points, repeat purchases, and fans who never really aged out of play.
Look for more news from Hasbro in the coming days as the company plants its flag at Comic-Con International: San Diego (SDCC) this week.
The post Hasbro CEO Chris Cocks on Magic’s Scale, Digital Gaming’s Reset, and the Next Collectibles Push appeared first on The Toy Book.
