The Grand Gala That Was 2019 for D&D

One of the parts of my job is to apparently to argue with statistics and data with the marketing company we used.  They announce glorious gains and improvements from their campaigns, and it's my job to drill huge holes into their claims, somewhat to argue against contractual increases, but personally, to tell them that they're full of it.  It's nice to celebrate a million phone calls, web leads, or even pieces of mail, but if half of them are blank or garbage, that should affect the success of the program.

I'm quite open to the fact that I'm no longer (and usually never was) part of the mainstream gamer demographic.

With the latest promotion by Wizard of the Coast for their market research, I didn't orginally exist as part of their research...

 The original pie chart stopped at 40-45, not including anyone truly middle-aged or beyond.

Those over 45 must be playing the special "Carousel" Edition.....

As I pace back to their last reported marketing survey in 1999, they claimed that there were 5.5 million active gamers in the US alone, and to make matters worse, they only included gamers 12-35 in the survey.  Back then, I was a spry 25 year old, so I didn't review the data much, but after twenty years, all of those now end up in the two oldest categories for 2019.

Now, considering they project 40 million fans of D&D, including folks who just listen to D&D podcasts or watch Critical Role, what are the actual number of active gamers in that pie chart?  I'd love to know how many of the 8-17 group are finding it on their own, or all they led in by the demographic WotC wants to ignore.

Some impressive numbers there, but additional questions are raised?  How many introductory boxed sets were the less than stellar Stranger Things boxed sets?  What's the comparison of gimic vs intrigue?  Are they counting worldwide sales for the 46 years, because my research shows Paizo overwhelming them in the US, and Amazon wasn't the dominant force yet in RPGS than it is now.

And is increased Sales is Europe unit sales, is Amazon.eu active in distribution, what's really going on?

It's great for self-promotion, but Hasbo shareholders might like more tangible financials.  A quick review of Twitter aside, how exactly is the exposure translating into players, then customers, than a consistent revenue stream?

And 4.3 billion minutes of passive viewership in Twitch sounds impressive, and I think it still is, but to put it into perspective the last season of Game of Thrones (since they bring it up), had 5.1 billion minutes of passive viewership, crammed together in six episodes.  Entire first season of the Big Band Theory (when it was 68th in viewership?)  2.8 billion minutes watch of the first run over 17 half hours in  year.  Far better than me going Facebook Live, but giving the data context is always important.