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Business News Retail
Gaming fuels physical product boost in entertainment retail
By Chris Cooke | Published on Monday 30 October 2017
The physical product side of the home entertainment market is back in growth according to research firm Kantar Worldpanel. Based on summer quarter stats, physical entertainment sales were up 2.2% year-on-year, the first growth since 2014. Woo! Though, says Kantar, gaming is behind the uplift.
It reports: “Driven by a stellar performance from the games market – which grew sales by 26.0%, offsetting declines of 5.4% and 4.8% in music and video respectively – this is the strongest overall growth physical entertainment has seen in over three years”.
The company’s Olivia Moore adds: “It’s been a great quarter for games – a real bright spot in the physical market’s struggle against the rise of digital. Helped by the release of much-anticipated title ‘Destiny’, mint games – as opposed to second hand – have led the charge. The market will now be looking to build on its success in the run up to Christmas”.
In terms of who is selling all this physical product, Amazon still has the biggest market share overall, though HMV leads on both music and video, and has made the biggest gains of late, up 2.3% to 18.1%, says Kantar.
Moore again: “Already the top seller of music, the past quarter has seen HMV leapfrog Amazon to become number one for sales of physical video too. The retailer increased its share of the video market with the help of a strong performance in new film releases – up six percentage points to stand at 22.5% – while Amazon’s share remained flat at 20.2%”.