UK spends record £9.7B on home entertainment in 2021

British consumers spent a record-breaking figure of around £10 billion on streaming services like Netflix and Spotify last year.

People's expenditure on home entertainment continued to boom due to the pandemic. Subscription of Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+ and Netflix, surged by 28%.

Overall spending on entertainment, which covers digital and physical video, music and gaming – including sales of CDs, DVDs and video games – increased by 4.6% last year to £9.7 billion, reports The Guardian.

A 4.6% growth in 2021 nullified the speculation of witnessing a decline in the new year after a bumper fuel of home entertainment in 2020.

Adele's "30" become the highest-selling album, with total sales of 600,000, ahead of Ed Sheeran's "=", which sold 432,000 copies.

Meanwhile, the latest edition of FIFA became the most popular video game of the year.

Due to the lack of concerts, fans in the UK began to store vinyl and revenue from vinyl sales rose 23% to £135.6 million, while CD sales continued to fall 3.9% to £150 million.

However, streaming services remained the popular choice of listening to music as subscriptions to Spotify, Amazon Music and Apple Music climbed 11% to £1.3 billion.

According to Variety, "James Bond: No Time to Die" became the best-selling video content of the year with 1.14 million retail sales, of which more than 717,000 units were sold in two weeks, the largest week-one disc sales since 2017.

However, DVD sales, as well as digital ownership and rentals from services such as Apple's iTunes and Sky Store, were affected due to a lack of blockbuster releases.

Kim Bayley, the chief executive of the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA), which publishes the annual report said, "The entire sector was braced for revenues to settle down in 2021 after 2020 grew an astonishing 18.7%, but growth has continued for the ninth successive year." 

"The vast majority of the growth is being driven by digital services making entertainment more accessible and convenient than ever before," he continued.

The public inclined more to internet-based services with almost 90% of total entertainment spending was on digital services.

Gaming

Gaming, which ruled the entertainment industry at £4.28 billion, witnessed a decline in revenues by 3.3% in 2021, after having a record 18% growth in 2020.

The ERA suggested due to the global shortage of semiconductors, gamers could not get their hands on the latest Xbox consoles and PlayStation.

However, mobile and tablet gaming increased by 8% year on year to £1.5 billion. The bestselling game of the year, FIFA sold 917,000 physical units and another 1.3 million in digital format.

Liz Bales, chief executive of Base, speculated 2022 as "the biggest and best year for home entertainment ever."