As the school summer holidays get underway, many families may find themselves breaking out a board game from the cupboard to while away a few hours out of the blazing sunshine.

Some will opt for the likes of Monopoly and Scrabble, but increasingly a new generation of gamers are instead preferring newer and less-well-known titles which have emerged as a result of a pandemic-inspired board game boom that shows few signs of slowing down.

Some of the newer generation of titles are on show when I meet Thomas Koegler, the chief executive of French game giant Asmodee, which counts the UK as its second largest market.

Asmodee is the largest games company in Europe and one of the biggest in the world behind the likes of US toy and game giants such as Hasbro and Mattel.

Behind him on a shelf sits one of the company’s most successful games, Catan. Originally published in 1995, the game puts players in control of groups of settlers attempting to build villages while acquiring and trading resources such as wood and livestock to score points.

Other popular titles in its stable include Ticket to Ride, where players compete to build the longest train route across cities and continents, and Wingspan, a game about creating bird sanctuaries. 

The firm also has a lucrative trading card arm which sells products based on well-known franchises such as Pokémon.

While many of the firm’s catalogue already has established fan bases, Koegler tells me more people have been drawn into the hobby after the pandemic lockdowns saw many households turn to board and card games as a way to stave off boredom.

‘Board and card games have become increasingly popular…we’ve seen a real acceleration since Covid,’ he says.

Koegler adds: ‘The pandemic opened the door for games to enter many households and a lot of people realised these are great ways to spend time together.’

And while Covid-19 is now in the past, the new customer base has remained and allowed Asmodee to cash in on a newly minted cohort of board game obsessives.

The firm’s results attest to this revival. For the year to March Asmodee’s profits surged to £23.6 million from £4 million the previous year following a 23 per cent rise in sales to £1.4 billion, around 16 per cent of which came from the UK.

Its success has built the company into a powerhouse with a stock market value of around £2.6 billion on the Swedish stock exchange, larger than major London-listed firms including retail giant Currys, online grocery group Ocado and bakery chain Greggs.

If the firm did decide to move to the UK, it would be a prime candidate to join the FTSE 250 list of some of Britain’s most valuable firms.

The board game boss points out that one of the reasons behind the hobby’s continued success is that board and card games offer relatively affordable entertainment at a time when many families are struggling with the cost of living crisis.

‘Even an expensive game that might cost £50 that you can play with four people, you will spend more than that driving to the cinema to see a film and pay for snacks and drinks for those same four people. Except with a board game you can play it multiple times without extra cost,’ he says.

Koegler highlights that in the age of smartphones many people were turning to the company’s games as a way to get offline and socialise with people face-to-face.

‘In a world where everything is becoming more and more digital people are craving opportunities to get off their screens. Playing board games can also help people with social anxiety build relationships, a problem that we saw developing during the pandemic,’ he adds.

Koegler is in a rare category of people who have managed to make one of their passions into a career.

After becoming ‘bored’ in his job as a business strategy consultant in Paris, the 44-year-old took a management role at Asmodee in 2016 after discovering his love for the hobby. He rose quickly through the ranks to become chief executive in 2024.

Less than a year later, he led the group onto the public markets when it was spun out from its then parent company Embracer.

Another reason behind the board game boom, Koegler says, is that the stereotype of the board game hobby as mostly older and male-dominated is increasingly falling away as more and more titles emerge targeting different audiences.

‘It’s true certain games might appeal to one gender over another but it’s not a rule. Lots of women play what you might consider traditionally male-dominated games. It’s not just men in their basements playing these games anymore.’

He likens the renaissance to how superheroes broke into the mainstream at the turn of the millennium thanks to successful films based on icons such as Batman and Spiderman.

‘In the 70s and the 80s superheroes were very nerdy and it was kind of frowned upon. But now they are fully mainstream. With our industry it’s kind of the same. We now have more and more people discovering the pleasure of playing board games, and that’s a great thing.’