alt Hacker NewsGW don't have competitors, it has an absolute monopoly on the 40k and Fantasy worlds it has built up. It's like saying there's competitors to LOTR or Star Wars or DnD.
Their worlds are their monopolies. Worlds that now have multi-decades worth of lore investment (almost 50 years now I think).
Just because someone else can make cheaper little plastic models doesn't affect GW in the slightest. Or pump out AI slop stories.
The Horus Heresy book series is like 64 books now. And that's just a spin-off. It's set way before when 40k actually is set (10,000 years).
With so much lore they need complicated archiving and tracking to keep on top of it all (I happen to know their chief archivist).
You can't replace that. I only say all this just to try and explain how off the mark you are on understanding what the actual value of the company is.
I live in Nottingham where GW is based, another of my friends happens to have a company on an industrial estate where there are like 3 other tabletop gaming companies. All ex-gw staff.
You could probably fit all their buildings in the pub that GW has on its colossal factory site.
You used to know people who worked at Boots, which used to be the big Nottingham employer. Now days, I know more people who work at GW.
BattleTech is somewhat of a competitor, and a variety of smaller games have some niches.
Plenty of people use proxies, too. There's places that do monthly packs of new STLs that could be an entire faction army, and there's long been places that sold "definitely not Space Marines and Sisters of Battle" minis too.
They don't have a threat of anyone overtaking them at current, but AI making alternatives in this vein even cheaper could eat away at portions of their bottom line.