'Fortnite’ more important than cryptocurrency to large companies during earnings season

“Fortnite” was more important than cryptocurrencies during the most recent earnings season, if judged by how many times each came up during company calls with analysts, according to a MarketWatch analysis.

Executives and analysts at tech giants as well as others within the benchmark S&P 500 index SPX, -0.20% mentioned the online game 54 times, compared with talking about cryptocurrency and bitcoin BTCUSD, +0.89% , which executives mentioned 45 times, according to a MarketWatch analysis of transcripts in FactSet.

MarketWatch included companies in the S&P 500 as well as a range of tech-focused index funds, and a group of other tech stocks that went public recently in its analysis. Aside from bitcoin, MarketWatch also included EthereumETHUSD, +0.52% , Ripple XRPUSD, +1.62% , Litecoin LTCUSD, +0.68% and Monero XMRUSD, +0.45% in its search for references to cryptocurrency in earnings transcripts.

Including “Fortnite” competitor “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” and the term “battle royale” — the term for the survivor-like genre both games are a part of — increases the number of mentions in earnings calls to 95.

“Fortnite’s” outsize success was enough to cause a number of analysts and investors to pay close attention: Epic Games Inc., which produced “Fortnite,” banked $296 million in sales from the game across the console, PC and mobile categories, up from $223 million in March, according to Superdata. April saw the launch of “Fortnite” on Apple Inc.’s AAPL, -0.38% iOS mobile platform, which reportedly brings in $2 million a day. Tencent Holdings Inc. TCEHY, -1.61% owns a 40% stake in Epic.