Games developer Zynga announced licensing deals with big-name media companies Disney, HBO and Warner Bros to produce a host of games based on some of the trio’s most well known film and TV titles.

The Warner Bros agreement will see the company develop a new Harry Potter Match-3 mobile game (where players must attempt to match at least three tiles in a row), which is expected to launch in the second half of 2019. Zynga’s HBO deal grants it rights to create two new Game of Thrones games, while the Disney accord covers Star Wars titles.

Results
Zynga revealed the new agreements at it announced its financial performance in Q3 beat its expectations.

Total revenue of $233.2 million was up 4 per cent year‐on‐year, while profit was $10.2 million, $31.2 million above guidance but down $7.9 million compared with Q3 2017.

The company also saw total bookings of $248.9 million, up 17 per cent year-over-year. Zynga defines bookings as a non-GAAP financial measure of net revenue derived from the sale of virtual goods which would be “recognised in a period” if it booked such income “at the time of the sale”.

Mobile revenue was $212.5 million, up 9 per cent year-over-year, and mobile bookings were $229.9 million, up 23 per cent.

“We achieved our best mobile revenue and bookings performance in Zynga history, driven by record mobile advertising and continued strength in mobile user pay,” CEO Frank Gibeau stated in an earnings call. Q3 was also its best ever in terms of mobile advertising income “player engagement and advertising network optimisations”.

Advertising revenue of $65.4 million was up 41 per cent, on bookings of $65.4 million, up 44 per cent. Mobile average daily active users hit 20 million, up 10 per cent.

Gibeau noted the company completed an integration of Gram Games during Q3: it acquired the studio for $250 million in May as part of a strategy of acquiring “talented teams and francises that can add to our portfolio of live services and expand our new game pipeline”.