Videogames Celebrates 10th consecutive Year as Entertainment's Largest Sector

01 March 2022 - Press release

Games sector more than twice as large as music

 

The videogames sector has now scored 10 consecutive years as entertainment's largest sector, according to the annual yearbook of digital entertainment and retail association ERA which is published today (Tuesday).

UK consumers spent £4.3bn on videogames in 2021, compared with £3.75bn on video and £1.68bn on recorded music. Videogames first overtook video, traditionally the largest entertainment sector in 2012, and has led the market every year since.

Videogames revenues are overwhelmingly digital, with that digital segment alone worth £3.775bn, more than the entire video market and more than twice that of the recorded music business.

ERA CEO Kim Bayley said, "The past 10 years have been definitively the Decade of Games. The rise of play-anywhere mobile gaming has turned us into a nation of gamers and crucially all this has happened while leaving traditional console games as popular as ever – just look at the waiting lists for PS5's and Xboxes."

One possible shadow over this success story is the fact that games sales actually fell in 2021, down 3.4% on 2020.

"That might be concerning – except for two things," said Bayley. "That small single digit fall came after an unprecedented 18% leap in revenues in 2020, the first year of lockdown.  And the decline in physical revenues was driven mainly by supply shortages of the new generation Playstation and Xbox consoles. We very much believe there is still growth potential in games."