U.K.’s Home Entertainment Market Valued at £2.34 Billion

New figures from the British Association for Screen Entertainment (BASE) show that the home entertainment market in the U.K. grew by 10 percent in 2018, bringing the total value of the category to £2.34 billion ($2.97 billion).

BASE reports that some 63 percent of consumers now choose to rent or stream film and TV content, with 37 percent of category value generated by people choosing to buy and own content either on disc or download. The growth of digital transactional reached a total market value of £400 million and EST film sales delivered a 36 percent growth year-on-year.

The Hugh Jackman-led The Greatest Showman marked the largest digital release to date, selling in excess of 770,000 digital copies since April. In all, the move has sold in excess of 2.68 million copies, more than doubling the sales of the nearest contender on the combined chart and with 72 percent of those sales coming from physical formats.

Game of Thrones led the 2018 TV charts, with “The Complete Seventh Season” selling more than 160,000 copies (including box sets) to top the disc chart and overall franchise sales totaling more than a quarter of a million copies. Peaky Blinders and Blue Planet continued to sell consistently, and classic Doctor Who rose five places to number five in the TV franchise chart. Both seasons of The Crown landed in the top five TV titles of the year.

Liz Bales, chief executive at BASE, said: “The third consecutive year of growth in the video category underlines the fact that audiences remain engaged with a broad variety of home entertainment content and format options. This serves as a testament to the innovation and energy that continue to drive the home entertainment category even as the high street retail environment presents clear challenges in some areas.

“Today’s customers enjoy a multitude of options when it comes to keeping themselves entertained and clearly continue to find a huge amount of relevance in the video category which, more flexibly than ever before, caters to every need; whether that is watching on the go, building a digital library or securing the absolute best viewing experience premium formats now guarantee. We face into the New Year with a clear desire to build on successes but also to ensure that the degree of choice available remains one of the category’s great strengths.”