The Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) has today published its annual yearbook.
The yearbook, which draws on data from Sheffield Hallam University’s Leisure Industries Centre, shows that there was an 18.3% increase in entertainment spending in 2020. This is the highest recorded growth rate the UK market has ever seen.
Games remains the biggest single sector, accounting for 48% of aggregate sales, followed by video (35%) and music (17%).
Driven by the growth of digital services, the combined music, video and games markets have grown 38% since 2016. Fastest growing digital sector in 2020 was video, where sales soared by 37.7% to £2.9bn.
In the video games sector, sales of physical products continue to grow. In 2020, sales of video console games were up 7.7% to £638.5m.
The yearbook also shows that in 2020, the most popular device for playing video games was the smartphone, used by 34.7% of gamers. Steam was the most popular destination for downloading games, used by 47.7% of gamers.
ERA CEO Kim Bayley said:
“The entertainment market was already growing without coronavirus, but with much of the leisure sector shuttered due to lockdown, music, video and games were in the right place at the right time.”