Candy Crush Saga’s $1,400 whales are popular: TV, film, and music want their cash, too

Digital distribution is affecting all forms of media, and gaming has figured out an answer that other industries are starting to look to.

Candy Crush Saga publisher King brought in $2 billion in revenue in 2015 across all of its games, and all of that money came from just 2 percent its total players, according to its annual fiscal report. As Amazon Studios boss Matthew Ball explained in a blog post on op-ed website Redef, approximately 738,000 people spent an average of $1,400 each to generate more than $1 billion for King’s smartphone apps like Candy Crush Soda Saga and Farm Heroes Saga. And Ball claims that the business model of attracting those high-spending whales is something that film and TV content producers need to consider.