Last year was a cause for concern Kickstarter again for a record. The increase during Corona times was more than significant. Crowdfunding campaigns generated around $730 million in 2020, and in 2019 – also a record year – it was $615 million. The sheer number of projects started has halved in recent years. This can be understood as a positive and negative signal at the same time.
The new record for crowdfunding Kickstarter is also the second highest increase since the platform was launched in 2009. This emerges from an analysis of the data by the agent ICO. Last year, supporters invested around 115 million US dollars more in the projects across all sectors than in 2019. Of all things, the Corona year, which is critical for many, is causing “crowd financing” to reach record highs.
Number of projects halved within five years
A total of 730 million US dollars flowed into the projects, of which only 2020 were started in 37.500. Five years earlier it was 77.486 - the previous all-time high. At the same time, the number of successfully financed crowdfunding projects has remained at the same level for years. Its providers were able to successfully complete around 19.000 campaigns. Mathematically, an average campaign could achieve around 39.000 US dollars.
The fact that the sheer number of campaigns started has dramatically collapsed while the successes remain the same is to be seen as a positive sign in dealing with Kickstarter: Many providers have become more professional, the chances of success are weighed before the launch, and projects are only started when the forecasts are positive.
The users benefit from the more detailed offers, which have changed significantly in terms of content and appearance in recent years. At the same time, however, the reduction in the number of projects is also a reminder of the original idea of the crowdfunding platform: purely ideal projects that are placed on Kickstarter "at random" have little chance of success.
The gap between canceled and funded projects has narrowed significantly. It seems as if less professional providers are now refraining from financing their ideas via Kickstarter. Crowdfunding there is now more of a big business than a way to support independent idea generators. Critical voices refer to Kickstarter more as a "shop" than as a support platform. Over the years, experience has accumulated that now makes crowdfunding a much more effective financing measure, much to the chagrin of small providers.
Kickstarter: Games drive records
The boom category Kickstarter is still games, followed by design and technology. There was a significant increase from 2019 to 2020, especially in the area of games, not least because of successful projects like Frosthaven, Nemesis Lockdown or ISS Vanguard. The campaign for the successor to Gloomhaven alone brought in around 13 million US dollars from over 83.000 supporters for Cephalofair Games and author Isaac Childres, which even surpassed the long-standing record holder Kingdom Death: Monster 1.5, with which 2016 million US dollars in 12,3 Dollars could be generated.
Nemesis Lockdown reached almost half of the Frosthaven record sum with almost seven million US dollars. The still gigantic five million that Awaken Realms earned seem almost ridiculous. Almost under the radar was Return to Dark Tower, a remake of a classic that raised around $XNUMX million in crowdfunding.
Publishing, art and comics were also booming, but things weren't so good for film and video or music. A negative influence from the global corona pandemic is presumably visible here, after all, concerts and cinema events were often canceled over the months. The effects are particularly clear for the theater sector, which has slumped by almost 80 percent compared to 2019. This is likely to have had the opposite effect, at least indirectly, on the games segment. Among other things Board games were a trend last year, big publishers like Kosmos or Ravensburger recorded significant increases in sales. Although most of the Kickstarter projects supported by 2020 will not appear until this year, the desire for games is likely to have fueled the crowdfunding trend.
Particularly impressive: Around a third of all investments were generated on Kickstarter through games. In numbers, that's around 236 million US dollars, divided among around 3.100 successfully financed projects - this number is also a record. In the previous year, only 2.700 campaigns were successful. Noticeable: the number of failures in the tabletop segment has remained roughly the same since 2015.
For providers, this leads to one main conclusion: Anyone who sets up a professional campaign has a chance of success of around 70 percent.
At the same time, the number of board games that have been successfully financed with large sums of money, i.e. funding with over 500.000 US dollars, has also increased. Nevertheless, the platform and the provider do not only benefit from the highlight projects. After all, just under 100 million US dollars were accounted for by the campaigns with funding targets below the half a million mark.
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