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Nicholas Lovell
Home   >   Analysis and Opinion   >   Analysis   >   The UK Games market grew to £7 billion in 2020

The UK Games market grew to £7 billion in 2020

By on March 19, 2021

UK trade body UKIE has put out an infographic capturing the size of the UK games market and pegs it at £7 billion in 2020.

Looking at the infographic, several points stand out:

  • Digital console software at £1.7 billion remains the largest single market, edging out mobile which has £1.5 billion. Digital console grew more in 2020 (24%) than mobile (21%). That may be a Covid effect as people have more time locked in their living rooms, but will be interesting to watch.
  • Physical software still exists, but its only 15% of the market, including pre-owned. I’m sure anyone reading this blog realises that the Gamestop shenanigans in the US are nothing to do with the underlying opportunity for retail, but still, that’s a pretty small market, although it did grow by 7% in 2020.
  • VR hardware grew by less than any other category of hardware. Obviously, it was a good year for new consoles, so maybe this is an unfair comparison, but I would hope for faster growth.
  • I can’t quite see where “esports revenue” is captured. Is it in the Streaming and Game Video Content segment, which is at £45.6 million. There are no growth percentages, which suggests UKIE doesn’t know how big the market was in 2019.
  • Events and Venues is down 97% to £249,000. Expected, but oof.

About Nicholas Lovell

Nicholas is the founder of Gamesbrief, a blog dedicated to the business of games. It aims to be informative, authoritative and above all helpful to developers grappling with business strategy. He is the author of a growing list of books about making money in the games industry and other digital media, including How to Publish a Game and Design Rules for Free-to-Play Games, and Penguin-published title The Curve: thecurveonline.com