Home entertainment dominated by digital revenue

There are lots of complaints about the state of play of the UK broadband landscape but the latest data on digital versus physical sales in the home entertainment market show that millions are able to enjoy digital content at home.

Total revenue from digital entertainment was £10,950.4 million versus £988 million for physical. With digital content comprising all but 9% of the market it is clear that the public is embracing the ease of access digital content gives you. 

While the pandemic will have driven take-up of digital content once people have started to use streaming it is very unlikely they will return to buying physical media. What we do expect to see though is some paring back on the number of streaming services people subscribe too, especially once the winter fuel bills hit and the myriad of other pressures on digital entertainment. 

Despite pandemic, political uncertainty and recession, entertainment has continued to soar. Growth of nearly 40% since 2019 is extraordinary. Few would have believed we would retain the huge bounce in revenues seen when the Covid lockdown kept people at home, but these numbers show that even amid recession, people are determined to maintain their spending on entertainment. This is a huge vote of confidence in the attractiveness of our member’s offer whether they be small independent record shops or global streaming platforms.

ERA Chairman Ben Drury

The chairman of the digital entertainment and retail association is upbeat about the prospects during the recession and while 2022 was very good, we don’t expect similar growth in revenue in 2023. Our prediction is that lots of homes will dip in and out with subscriptions or lower the UHD/HD options on their package to save some money, that said a full Netflix subscription is cheaper than going to the cinema for a household even before you start buying snacks. 

Gaming is the largest revenue stream in home entertainment and FIFA 23 which sold 2.3 million units across both digital and physical formats was the biggest selling. The popularity of digital is obvious when you can get a digital code for £24.99 on the Xbox One and a physical copy seems to be going for £37.99. The danger with digital downloads is chasing for the bargain and ending up on a dodgy site, in the physical world this is akin to spotting a bargain on a market stall to find when home the DVD is a poor quality rip-off. 

For those who have slow broadband and are tied into buying physical media in the gaming world it is often the case that to play the online version of a game which is possible with a basic USO level service of 10 Mbps sync download and 1 Mbps sync upload that a large update is needed to match the digital download software version. This is why for gamers they will invariably want connections in the hundreds of Mega bits per second.