Video overtook games as UK’s biggest entertainment sector in 2023

Annual UK video game sales fell behind film revenues last year for the first time since 2012.

The combined value of the UK video, games and music markets rose for the eleventh successive year in 2023, up 7% to all-time record of £11.9 billion, according to preliminary figures released today by the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA).

Game sales, which include software, subscriptions and token-based playing mechanisms, have now doubled over the past decade. They grew 2.9% year-over-year to reach £4.7 billion in 2023.

Digital software sales accounted for just shy of 89.6% of annual games revenues, compared to 88.75% a year earlier.

EA Sports FC 24 was the year’s best-selling console game, shifting around 2.39 million copies. Despite dropping the FIFA branding this year, EA’s title sold in “almost identical quantities to its predecessor”, according to the ERA.

Video revenues grew 10% year-over-year to £4.9 billion in 2023, driven primarily by streaming video on demand services like Prime Video, Netflix, Disney+ and Now TV.

UK spending on music streaming subscriptions, vinyl and CDs was also up 9.6% last year to £2,219.9 million, which was just 0.08% shy of record annual sales generated in 2001.

“2023 marked a dramatic return to the top for video, finally ending games’s decade-long run as entertainment’s largest sector,” said ERA CEO Kim Bayley.

“For a long time the only way to enjoy video digitally was illegally. Streaming changed all that and has transformed not just the viewing habits of tens of millions, but the fortunes of the entire movie and TV business.”

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She added: “Gaming is the most digitally native sector of the entertainment business and in 2023 it continued to show its ability to connect with people across every channel and demographic.

“A maturing market brings its own challenges, but at more than twice the size of the music market, games remains a leviathan.”