The Embracer group (formerly known as THQ Nordic) plans to purchase Asmodee and turn it into it's ninth operating group. The acquisition will cost 2.75 billion €. Embracer did buy a lot of companies in the past like Gearbox (Borderlands), Warhorse (Kingdom Come) or Koch Media. Asmodee is mostly known for implementing board games (like Carcassone) into video games. I didn't know they were worth that much.

https://embracer.com/release/embracer-group-intends-to-make-a-strategic-acquisition-of-leading-board-gaming-group-asmodee-that-would-form-the-ninth-operating-group/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embracer_Group

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asmodee

Yeah, hard to see the value. Asmodee has actual board game publisher under it's roof, not only video game implementations of some, but still I fail to see the value for Embracer.

The success of Board Game Arena is probably why the sellers think it has more than doubled in value during the past three and a half years.
Big company with a lot of big board games worth over a billion dollars before Board Games Arena took off during the pandemic.

Looking at Asmodee's Wiki they have been on a ridiculously big purchasing spree themselves.

So Embracer is into meta acquisition now (acquisitions through acquisitions).

Yeah, Asmodee was switching hands back in 2018 for €1.2 billion, so it won a lot of value in a pretty short time. But even before that... it was sold for @€143 million in 2013. Yeah, about eight times the value in just five years.

As mentioned, Asmodee is mostly about the underlying boardgames, card games, TTRPG, with video game implementations a side show.
Albeit their newer Arena product is about bringing those games into online/digital space, and many of their IPs are licenced from videogames.
But despite Embracer obviously having relatively more interest in digital angle, alot of these are IPs which need to live on their own regardless.
Many of these IPs have their own fan base which could be basis of break-out video game product, or other digital angle even if not video game as such.
And building tabletop spin-offs of their videogame IPs could be way to avoid cost of licenced IP model while building brand of IP cheaply / via lateral marketing.
Still, crazy the amount of money involved, even if Embracer HAS the financing, to actually put that much towards Asmodee seems crazy.
Even if Asmodee was incredibly successful for it's market, nobody thinks there really is that much money to be made from that niche.
Then again, there is plenty of crossover appeal, and plenty of these games could draw in wider base if made available in widely accessible format.

I think there will be concern here from Asmodee's traditional customer base that it will end up with forced digital microtransactions or the like.
Although if they are happy to leave the classic formats to do their thing, the same people could be happy to have stable funding and stewardship of IP.
The niche (or niches) of "online tabletop simulator/interface" (which can have varying scope of ambition/implementation) is pretty hot in "tabletop" space.
(I'm involved in some games which are heavily adjacent to Asmodee's niche, and/or connected via their distribution business)