ERA: games remained biggest home entertainment industry in the UK in 2022
Games made an estimated £4.66 billion last year, retail association says
Video games remained the largest home entertainment sector in the UK in 2022, according to the Digital Entertainment and Retail Association's annual report.
The UK home entertainment market is estimated to have reached £11.1 billion in revenue last year, ERA reported, including music, video, and games sales.
While the fastest growing industry was video (up 14.4% to £4.43 billion), games continued to be the biggest money maker, at £4.66 billion, up 2.3% compared to 2021.
Games represented 42.1% of the total home entertainment revenues in 2022, according to ERA.
Games digital sales were estimated to represent £4.17 billion (up 3.1% year-on-year) while physical sales were down 4.5% to £488 million. Physical software accounted for just 10% of the sector in 2022, ERA said.
Looking at the breakdown of digital sales, console downloads were up 12.2% year-on-year, reaching £724 million. Mobile was up slightly 3.2%, for a total of £1.48 billion in revenue.
This report is based on preliminary figures that will be consolidated in ERA's yearbook, due in March. For games, the physical sales data is courtesy of GfK Entertainment, while the digital revenue comes from Omdia estimates (including digital online, mobile and tablet gaming). Finally, the digital charts come from the combined GSD / IFSE data.
ERA CEO Kim Bayley commented: "Gaming remains the often-unheralded leader of the entertainment market. While growth at 2.3% was lower than that of video or music, its scale is enormous and in terms of innovation and excitement it continues to set the pace for the entire entertainment sector."
For an in-depth look into 2022 for games in the UK, you can read our annual report on this page.
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