King's Candy Crush Franchise Had a $391 Million Q1, Its Best Ever

The world's mobile gamers still have a serious sweet tooth for King's flagship Candy Crush series. Sensor Tower Store Intelligence estimates put the franchise's combined player spending in Q1 2019 at $391 million globally across the App Store and Google Play, which represents a 2 percent year-over-year increase from 1Q18 and marks its highest-grossing first quarter ever.

2012's original Candy Crush Saga was the growth leader for the franchise last quarter and accounted for the majority—64 percent—of revenue at more than $251 million. This reflected Y/Y growth of 7 percent.

Candy Crush Soda Saga took in the second-largest portion of the franchise's revenue in Q1 at $87 million or 22 percent, but saw its player spending dip 30 percent from 1Q18's estimated $124 million. Spending in this game's direct follow-up, Candy Crush Jelly Saga, also slipped Y/Y, down 35 percent over 1Q18 to approximately $15.5 million.

This placed Jelly Saga behind the franchise's newest entry, Candy Crush Friends Saga, which grossed an estimated $37.6 million in its first full quarter of global availability. This was nearly 2.5 times more than Jelly Saga earned and accounted for nearly 10 percent of series revenue for the quarter.

The Candy Crush franchise has grossed an estimated $6.37 billion worldwide since Q1 2014 and has amassed more than 1.34 billion downloads, not including Android in China.