Digital Entertainment sales pass £1bn barrier for the first time in the UK

According to the Entertainment Retailers Assocition (ERA), digital entertainment sales have exceeded £1bn for the first time ever in the UK. Digital sales of music, video and games grew in total by 11.4% in 2012 to reach a record total of £1.033bn.

Videogames remained the largest digital sector, grossing £552.2m, more than digital sales of music and video combined. Video  games also showed most growth at 20.3% with music’s digital growth at 15.1%.

Physical sales of music, video and videogames fell by 14.9%, physical video was down 11.4% and videogames were down 26.4%. Depsite their decline, physical sales still retain a dominant share of the entertainement market, accounting for over two thirds of all sales.

Looking at the combined figures, the entertianment industry faced an overall decline in 2012. Combined sales of music, video and videogames were down 12% to £4.21bn with the biggest fall suffered by videogames, which are down 17.4%.

ERA Director General Kim Bayley commented, “The dearth of attractive releases during summer 2012 was clearly a significant factor. Suppliers need to do more to rebalance their release schedules and improve the quality of their releases. No retailer can afford to pay overheads on a store for 52 weeks of the year if all the key releases are going to be concentrated in the last quarter. And entrepreneurs will think twice about investing in new digital services if releases fail to excite the public. Luckily the message appears to be getting through and we look forward to being able to offer the public a much better release slate in 2013.”

The ERA statistics combine data from The Official Charts Company data on actual sales of music and video (physical) and music (digital), GfK Chart-Track data on actual sales of videogames on physical formats and the IHS Screen Digest estimates of digital sales of video and videogames.

Source: ERA