Short answers, pulled from the story.
Wizards of the Coast was founded by Peter Adkison in 1990 outside of Seattle, Washington. The company was named after a guild of wizards in a Dungeons and Dragons campaign Adkison was playing at the time.
Hasbro acquired Wizards of the Coast in September 1999 for about US$325 million. The company operates WotC as a subsidiary and in 2021 reorganized it as the lead part of a new division called Wizards and Digital.
Magic: The Gathering debuted at Origins Game Fair in Dallas in July 1993 and sold out its entire supply of 2.5 million cards at Gen Con the following month. The game's revenue grew WotC from a basement startup to a 250-person company within two years, and by 1995 WotC's annual sales exceeded US$65 million.
Wizards of the Coast announced the purchase of TSR, publisher of Dungeons and Dragons, on the 10th of April 1997. The acquisition cost $25 million and also included Five Rings Publishing Group.
In January 2023, a leaked draft of OGL 1.1 showed WotC planned sweeping changes that would affect all licensed publishers. Following mass subscription cancellations and industry-wide backlash, WotC reversed course and released the System Reference Document 5.1 under an irrevocable creative commons license, CC-BY-4.0.
By 2015, an estimated 20 million people played Magic: The Gathering. Dungeons and Dragons 5th edition sales rose 41 percent in 2017 and another 52 percent in 2018, with nine million people watching D&D played on Twitch in 2017 alone.