If I’ve learned one thing about the gaming efforts of the major sports leagues, one platform weighs heavily in their strategies: Roblox. Millions of young people log into it and play games every day, like FIFA Super Soccer, Driving Empire or Super NFL Tycoon.
Thursday, market research firm Newzoo (a sister company under Leaders Group with SBJ), released its latest report on how players interact with Roblox and what happens when they age out of the platform or seek deeper games.
A few high-level highlights:
Even if Roblox is the most-played “game” on PC and console by total hours, it remains a mobile-first audience. Engagement, not reach, is also what drives this audience.
Its players over-index on arcade, co-op and survival-horror outside the platform, and they under-index “sharply” on premium triple-A games, a stark difference from traditional gamers.
They also over-index on anime/animation and youth entertainment IP. Newzoo suggestions this is strong enough to shape their future buying habits.
If you want to connect with Roblox players, it’s better to integrate into existing hits on the platform than create original games, especially for traditional game publishers.
The under-indexing on triple-A games, though, doesn’t include sports, said Tianyi Gu, manager/market analysis at Newzoo.
“Sports over-indexes overall: in H1 2026, 54% of Roblox players on console also played a sports game, vs. 41% of all console players. Two sports titles, Descenders [3.12x] and Riders Republic [2.25x], are in the top 10 games for overlap with Roblox players. That reinforces the pull toward arcade-style play.”
And how does it work with the mainstream sports games? Per Gu, the over-indexing for NBA 2K26 is 1.40X, 1.26X for Madden NFL 26 and 1.12X for EA Sports FC 26. The one under-indexing the PC/console average? That’s MLB: The Show 26 at .76X.
But the biggest insight may come from Roblox’s Q2 2026 report. While it shows 123 million daily active players — up 10% year over year — that DAU is down from Q1’s 132 million players. Roblox points to its recent age-verification procedures for this decline (along with a shift to lower-monetizing games), and it’s not only withdrawn its guidance for the fiscal year but also projects a bookings decline of 14%-18%.
Gu cited Roblox noting it faced “‘greater-than-expected headwinds’ from its age-check rollout, which slowed new user acquisition” but also pointed out that it had a “very high 2025 base” of players that fell off viral hits such as Grow a Garden and Steal a Brainrot, which helped push Roblox Q3 2025 DAUs and bookings up 70% year over year.
But even with that decline, Roblox remains far and ahead in terms of playtime hours on PC and console, per Newzoo’s game performance monitor (which does not include China and India).
Newzoo
Another nugget that stands out, and if I were in charge of gaming strategies or a publisher interested in Roblox, it would worry me: The platform averages about 14 million concurrent players over 6.7 million games, but around 7 million of those players are engaging with just the top 50 games on Roblox. As Newzoo states in its report, “about 52% of players are concentrated in 0.0007% of experiences. Breakout hits aren’t a fringe part of the platform; they’re where the audience is, which is why identifying what’s spiking matters for any brand or IP holder considering Roblox.”
What’s next?
Plenty of Roblox players age out, wanting deeper, better-looking games. Where do they go?
The live-service giants such as Fortnite (29%) and Minecraft (28%) absorb 46% of lapsed Roblox players. Another 26% head to Grand Theft Auto/Grand Theft Auto Online. But 30% also take up a Call of Duty game. Gu notes this stands out because Roblox players under-index on realistic military shooters, but Call of Duty: Warzone (the series’ free-to-play option) has similar in-game transactions that other Roblox games emulate. And at some point, some Roblox players do crave deeper, more intense games.
The sports game that catches more of these players than any other? It’s EA Sports FC at 12%, which makes sense as children grow older and start adopting sports fandoms or play sports themselves.
What stands out among the games on this chart? They all offer in-game transactions, and this shows the spending habits that Roblox players pick up can continue when they adopt more robust games.
