In the UK, the entertainment market is getting its pace back and 2015 was a pretty good example of that. Three sectors namely video, music and video games were surveyed and the findings were recently revealed.
Interestingly, gaming is not only the fastest growing sector in the United Kingdom it is also earning the most. According to a study held by Official Charts Company (music, video) and GfK Chart-track (videogames), gaming industry grew by a massive 10 percent.
Just to put things in context, the video industry saw a 1.5 percent growth and music 3.5 percent. Video games grew twice as much as video and music combined!
While the music industry raked in £251 million from services like Spotify, Google Play Music, Apple Music, Deezer and Amazon Prime, video services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Sky Store allowed the genre to exceed £1 billion.
However, all this pales in comparison with “games digital revenues from online and mobile services” which reached £1.9 billion. This is 17 percent more than last year!
The CEO of Entertainment Retailers Association of the UK, Kim Bayley, cited anti-piracy measures and campaigns as one of the primary reason of the growth:
Ten years ago the entertainment business was on the edge of a precipice. Piracy was rampant and there were few legal alternatives. Thanks to huge investments by the likes of Apple and Steam and Netflix and Spotify, there has been a significant turnaround.
ERA also released top ranking products from all three categories together (on the basis of number of sales) and guess what, Adele’s 25 was the only thing that managed to sell more than FIFA 16 and Call of Duty Black Ops 3, although the difference between 25 and FIFA 16 was not very big.
Other notable video games that made it to the top list were Fallout 5, Star Wars Battlefront and GTA 5, all of whom were in the top 10, above Fifty Shades of Grey, Minions, Hunger Games Mockingjay Part 1 and in some cases even Jurassic World.
What do you make of all this?
Thanks, ERA.
