Report: U.K. Home Entertainment Market at £4.9 Billion

The value of the home entertainment category in the U.K. rose to £4.9 billion ($6.3 billion) in 2023, up 10.6 percent year on year, according to figures by the British Association for Screen Entertainment (BASE) and Official Charts Company (OCC).

This is inclusive of SVOD, digital, disc sales and rental (PEST, EST, PVOD, VOD, DVD, Blu-ray, 4K UHD, boxset), up 10.6 percent following a 14.3 percent rise in 2022. The increase was driven by the ongoing surge in consumer uptake of subscription services, with over 56 million subscriptions in 2023, a 5.4 percent gain.

Barbie was the U.K.’s biggest visual entertainment title across theatrical and home entertainment, with a performance of £95.5 million ($122 million) at the U.K. box office, as well as a value of over £9.5 million ($12 million) across transactional home entertainment in 2023, through PEST and PVOD releases in September 2023 and physical release in October 2023.

John Wick: Chapter 4 topped the 2023 rental charts, with 306,000 sales on VOD, to add to its 388,000 sales across disc and EST.

Avatar: The Way of Water was the highest-performing EST and disc title, with digital and physical ownership transactions at 560,000 units across the year, following a £52 million ($66 million) performance at the U.K. box office before its transactional and Disney+ premiere in June 2023.

Oppenheimer was the biggest title across both disc formats in the U.K. in 2023, with a value of £1.1 million ($1.4 million) on Blu-ray and £673,000 ($859,000) on DVD.

Matilda the Musical was the fifth highest-selling title of 2023, with overall transactions of 483,000 in 2023.

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour saw a week one value of £428,000 ($545,000) on PVOD following its release on December 13, building on the £12.2 million ($15.6 million) box office performance across six weeks in fall 2023, the biggest event cinema release ever in the U.K.

Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon season one topped the TV charts for the second year running, taking the number one spot despite its release at the end of 2022 and prior to the release of season two on Netflix in the U.K. in summer 2024. The strong appetite for audiences for ownership of SVOD premiere shows is clear, as the rest of the top five TV titles include The Last of Us season one at number two, Star Trek—Strange New Worlds season one at number three and The Walking Dead complete 11th season at number five, with Doctor Who 60th-anniversary specials at number four.

Liz Bales, chief executive at BASE, said: “It’s genuinely wonderful to see the volume of units purchased and the range of titles in 2023’s top five U.K. buy, rent and own home entertainment chart, as it perfectly demonstrates the convenience and breadth of this part of the home entertainment offering, and how much consumers value that. Audiences can control when and where they watch the films, TV shows and special interest programming they love in a completely complimentary way to the SVOD services they invest in, which is shown in those fantastic final week figures of 2023: home entertainment titles were bought, downloaded and rented nearly one million times across digital and physical in that week alone, in addition to the multiple SVOD and linear TV options. When we look back at 2023, and the resurgence of HMV in particular, which opened 24 new stores in the U.K., and with 38 stores in total, we can see that servicing the fans and the appetite for physical releases on the U.K. high street, as well as an incredibly healthy EST and rental market, is incredibly important.”