Digital Services Boosted U.K. Entertainment Content Sales in 2013
Growing demand for digital services gave the U.K. entertainment content sector a lift in 2013 as total sales of interactive games, music and video, including digital and physical content, grew 4 percent to 5.3 billion pounds ($8.7 billion at $1 = 0.61 pounds), the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) said. “Fast-growing” services including Netflix, Spotify and Steam allowed the sector to achieve what will likely be the strongest result since 2009, it said, citing preliminary year-end data.
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The growth came after “at least five years of decline,” said ERA Director General Kim Bayley in a news release. Retailers invested “hundreds of millions of pounds in new digital services and these numbers suggest the public is responding in … droves,” she said. The 2013 data indicated that ERA retail members are helping music, video and game companies find new markets, she said.
U.K. videogame sales grew the most of those three entertainment categories in 2013, at 6.6 percent, while video sales grew 3.7 percent, said ERA. Music was the only one of the three categories that slowed, declining 0.5 percent from 2012, it said.
The strongest-performing physical formats were Blu-ray video (up 10 percent at 251.8 million pounds) and vinyl albums (up 101 percent at 14.6 million pounds), said ERA. That demonstrated physical formats “can still flourish when they are able to offer something distinctive,” said Bayley. The entertainment market remains a mostly disc-based, physical market despite the digital growth, with physical formats accounting for 56 percent of 2013 sales, said ERA.
The PS4 and Xbox One launches in November came “too late to rescue” the struggling physical game market, which ended 2013 down 2.9 percent from 2013 at 1 billion pounds, said ERA. In stark contrast, digital game sales grew 16.4 percent to 1.2 billion pounds, it said. About 530,000 PS4s were sold in the U.K. in 2013, ahead of the Xbox One’s 364,000 units, it said, citing GfK Chart-Track data. There was “huge demand” for the consoles at retail, but “stock sold out quickly,” said Bayley. The year’s top-selling console game was Take-Two Interactive’s Grand Theft Auto V, which sold 3.7 million units, said ERA. Videogames remained entertainment’s biggest sector in 2013, accounting for 41.4 percent of total entertainment, ahead of video’s 38.9 percent and music’s 19.7 percent, it said.
Sales of physical video declined 6.8 percent in 2013 in the U.K. to 1.4 billion pounds, but sales of digital video grew 40 percent to 621 million pounds, “reflecting the rapid growth” of streaming services including Netflix, LOVEFiLM and Blinkbox, said ERA. The top-selling video release of the year was Skyfall, which sold 3 million units, it said.
Physical music sales fell 7.6 percent in 2013 in the U.K. to 542.7 million pounds in 2013, said ERA. But digital music sales grew 3.5 percent to 397.2 million pounds and streaming music sales grew 33.7 percent to 103.1 million pounds, it said. The overall music sales decline was mainly due to a weak release slate, said Bayley.