Garena, SEA Ltd’s digital entertainment arm, announced today a strategic partnership with China’s Tencent that will let Garena distribute and promote Tencent mobile and PC games in countries like Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan, Indonesia, and the Philippines for a period of 5 years.
The tie-up will give Tencent access to the Southeast Asian gaming market through Garena’s distribution network.
Forrest Li, Chairman and Group Chief Executive Officer of Sea talked about how this new move would bring quality intellectual property (IP) for Southeast Asia’s growing gaming community. Garena has published Tenent games including Arena of Valor and League of Legends across its network.
It will also set Garena on a new growth trajectory by leveraging on Tencent’s gaming expertise to grow in Southeast Asia’s burgeoning gaming market. According to a Southeast Asian PC Online Games Market report (2017-2021), Southeast Asia is the region with the fastest growth for PC Online Games in terms of revenue and is projected to hit $2 billion by 2021. Mobile gaming is also said to be poised to surpass PC Online Games revenue by end-2018.
This naturally presents new opportunities for Tencent, China’s social media and gaming giant. More importantly, it is opening new doors for Tencent’s gaming business at a time when Tencent is battling a 35% decline in market cap in 2018. Following the domestic gaming market slowdown after a temporary freeze in the issue of gaming licenses in China, this new deal, Tencent’s 3rd major restructuring plan and positive Q3 results might offer some respite that the company needs.
Editor: Ben Jiang