Score Entertainment

• 1. Introduction

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  In early 2009, Panini America bought out Donruss Playoff LP, and one of its labels, Score Entertainment, closed down for good. Score Entertainment had been a trading card design and manufacturing company based in Arlington, Texas. It belonged to the Donruss Playoff LP family of companies. Its first card game reached shelves in 2000, years before that closure arrived. From that point on, the company built most of its business by licensing characters other people had already made popular. What did that licensing strategy look like across the company's run? And did Score Entertainment ever put out anything that was entirely its own?

• 2. A Roster Of Licenses

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  Dragon Ball Z anchored two of the company's games, a Collectible Card Game and a separate Trading Card Game built around the same franchise. Score Entertainment licensed popular intellectual properties across its catalog, drawing on television programs, animated series, and video games rather than inventing its own characters. Its lineup also included the Bleach Trading Card Game, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Collectible Card Game, and the Case Closed Trading Card Game. It stretched to the Dragon Ball GT Trading Card Game and the Dragon Booster Trading Card Game as well. Card games for Fruits Basket: Friends of the Zodiac, InuYasha, Sonic X, and Yu Yu Hakusho rounded out the roster. Eleven licensed games in total carried the Score Entertainment name into franchises that already had an audience waiting. Two titles broke from that pattern: Epic Battles and Afterworld.

• 3. Two Originals

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  Epic Battles Trading Card Game carried the Score Entertainment name without any licensed characters attached. Afterworld followed as the newer of the two originals to reach players.