Mumbai: The value of the UK home entertainment category rose to £4.43 billion in 2022. This is inclusive of all SVoD, digital and disc sales, and rental (PEST, EST, PVoD, VoD, DVD, Blu-Ray, 4K UHD, BoxSet. This is up three per cent year-on-year (YoY), demonstrating choice and scale in a dominant UK entertainment category.

The figures were released by the British Association for Screen Entertainment (base) and the Official Charts Company (OCC).

Other Findings:

•     The total value of the UK screen industry rose to £11 billion including home entertainment, cinema and payTV, showing 12 per cent yoy growth.
•     Streaming video on demand (SVoD) is now embedded in the UK home entertainment landscape: UK consumers had nearly 50 million subscriptions in 2022, in a sector worth £3.8 billion, showing 17.6 per cent growth yoy.
•     Free ad supported streaming TV (fast) continues its growth surge: the UK fast market is expected to be the second biggest in the world with a value of $500 million by 2027.
•     Top Gun Maverick was the biggest home entertainment title delivering 1.566 million sales across all transactional formats (video on demand (VOD), digital electronic sell through (EST), Blu-ray and DVD) and Top Gun (1986) was the biggest title on VoD.
•     Spider-man: No Way Home swung into a close second, delivering 365 million sales in 2022 across all transactional formats.
•     TV converts across formats, where HBO House Of The Dragon: Season One led a TV disc chart dominated by franchises.
•     51 titles were released on premium electronic sell through (PEST) and premium video on demand (PVoD) in 2022, a 6.3 per cent rise yoy, where the average window was 35 days out from theatrical release.
•     Electronic sell through (EST) is the biggest transactional format with a value of £231 million, holding its value yoy, as 13 titles sell 100k+ units.
•     Transactional video on demand (TVoD) grows in value to £132 million, up 6.1 per cent yoy.
•     Warner Bros. Discovery was the leading transactional distributor across physical (34 per cent market share) and digital (17.8 per cent share).
•     Physical delivered £209 million to the sector in 2022 (DVD, Blu-ray, 4K UHD, Boxset), as 13 titles sell over 100k units.
•     Blu-ray and Blu-ray 4K UHD have grown to 40 per cent of the physical market, with 4K UHD demonstrating 14.7 per cent YoY growth.

Top Gun Maverick’s release on SVod channel Paramount+ a few days before Christmas 2022 demonstrated a release strategy for this top-flight content that drove consumer engagement across multiple verticals.

The original Top Gun (1986) was the most rented title in 2022, with 488k VoD transactions, giving audiences a much-loved nostalgia boost as the sequel flew to £83.6 million at the UK box office, ultimately claiming the number one UK box office spot of 2022.

Spider-man: No Way Home was the second biggest overall title in the UK following its premiere in 2021, with a total UK box office performance of £97 million, followed by 1.365 million sales across transactional formats, where more consumers once again opted for ownership with 9,15,000 sales across DVD, Blu-ray, Boxset and EST, delivering a total value of £12.4 million to the sector, coupled with over 450k rental transactions (VoD).

Base chair, Sony Pictures Entertainment VP commercial Robert Marsh said, “Spider-Man: No Way Home was a critical and commercial success for the UK category and a perfect example of an entertainment landscape that puts consumer choice first. Spider-Man continues to be a huge fan favourite, demonstrated by the phenomenal box office number it achieved across the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, and is now one of the top five biggest UK box office titles ever.”

“That platform of success helped deliver an equally impressive performance across the breadth of the UK home entertainment category. It was the fastest title ever to sell 500k units on EST in the UK, and the second biggest title of 2022 across all formats combined, featuring in the top five for every individual format chart, including an incredibly strong complimentary performance on both VoD and Blu-Ray. Spider-Man: No Way Home became available to Sky Cinema and Now subscribers in July of 2022 offering consumers even more choice as to how to access the film, and appetite for transactional formats has continued, showing the enduring appeal of this franchise. It also spotlights the myriad ways that audiences can find their favourite films and shows across the first year of release,” he added.

Svod: UK consumers had nearly 50 million subscriptions in 2022, a 6.4 per cent growth yoy, following the 28 per cent yoy growth in 2021, and the 44 per cent surge of 2020. That averages at 2.7 subscriptions per household, compared to 2.3 services per household in 2021.

The SVod channel of home entertainment is now worth £3.8 billion in subscriptions in the UK, up 17.6 per cent yoy. An audience base of 16.24 million UK households use at least one online video service, which is 56 per cent of homes, meaning that over 40 per cent of homes do not have SVoD. However, one in twenty households in the UK took out a new online video subscription in the last three months of 2022.

In 2022 Netflix introduced new ad-tiered options to appeal to more consumers, with Disney+ announcing their intention to do the same in the future, creating dual and complimentary SVod/AVod models, while major new services like Paramount+ launched also in the UK. The growth of advertising across digital media continues to increase in the UK, where three out of every four advertising pounds is spent on online formats. The UK ad market grew to £30 billion in 2021, £8 billion more than predicted, due to the pandemic and a shift to online advertising, and the value of the UK advertising market in 2022 was predicted to be £35 billion, reflecting the huge revenue opportunities for the new wave of Fast and AVod channels.

Fast: Fast channels from providers including Pluto TV, Roku, Peacock, Freevee and TV Player continued their growth in 2022. The UK is the second largest fast market in the world, runner up only to the US which currently accounts for 90 per cent approx. of the global fast channel market, valued at just under $4 billion in 2022.

Current forecasts place the value of the UK fast market at $500 million by 2027. The success and growth of fast channels allows distributors to maximise and reinvigorate their catalogue sales while the breadth of channels and content appeals to multiple different sections of the market. The largest average generational users of fast in the UK in 2022 were millennials with a 33 per cent share. However, the largest individual generational share was on Pluto TV, where 44 per cent of users are boomers/seniors.

Base CEO Liz Bales said, “UK home entertainment is now a model of complimentary channels and their successful co-evolution benefits savvy audiences. The top transactional titles are shown to perform across all platforms – 13 titles in 2022 sold over 100k units on both EST and disc. After a period of phenomenal growth in the last few years subscription rates are clearly slowing, but the introduction of ad-tiers to traditionally SVoD services like Disney+ and Netflix demonstrates the agility of our category to provide consumers with more affordable options amid the ongoing cost-of-living challenges. It also creates a significant new advertising revenue stream outside of traditional subscription and transactional revenues for the platforms, bolstering total industry revenue, and allowing continued investment in future content, while driving the potential for further subscription growth by giving consumers more options.”

She added, “That said, a big box office number is still the greatest predictor of transactional home entertainment success, so it was fantastic to see Spider-Man: No Way Home and Top Gun Maverick convert their outstanding cinema performance into the biggest disc, digital and VoD performances of the year, and to see the original Top Gun (1986) movie have such a huge result on rental, proving once again that audiences love nostalgia, and that digital transactional channels, as well as the growing number of fast channels, are the perfect platforms to optimise consumer thirst for classic catalogue titles.”

The continuing growth of the home entertainment industry in the UK saw 51 titles released on premium video on demand (PVoD) and/or premium EST (PEST) in 2022, showing momentum for this recently introduced transactional model which premiered in April 2020 in response to the global pandemic. 2022 saw a 6.3 per cent rise on the number of PVoD and PEST titles released YoY, despite a broad reopening of the cinema estate in 2022. The PVoD and PEST model of release is projected to have added an additional seven per cent to digital transactional consumer spend in 2022.

The average release window from theatrical to PVoD and PEST is now 35 days from theatrical release. EST follows at 40 days post theatrical release, and Disc follows that, at 59 days. SVoD follows further down the window, as David Sidebottom, VP Insights at Fancensus, says, “Since the pandemic, the ‘1st Pay’ window i.e., the length of time between theatrical release and when a movie is released for the first time on a subscription service has fragmented significantly, varying across titles, studio, and platform. Typically for a major studio title this window now ranges from 6-9 months in the UK.”

EST: Electronic sell through (EST), often referred to by consumers as download and keep, remains the biggest transactional format, with a small rise of 1.1 per cent yoy, and a value of £231 million. However, there were 16.8 million EST transactions in the UK in 2022, a drop of five per cent on the 17.7 million in 2021. Video on demand (VoD), often thought of as ‘rental’ by consumers, continues to perform an important role for the market as an entry point for digital consumption. Futuresource Consulting states that there were 33.6 million VoD transactions in 2022. The market is now worth £132 million, a 6.1 per cent growth yoy.

Warner Bros. Discovery was the leading transactional distributor for the second year running, across both physical (34 per cent value market share) and digital (17.8 per cent value market share). With the strong performance and extended digital window of Top Gun: Maverick, Paramount home entertainment performed well on digital to secure a 16.6 per cent EST market share. The power of the collective gave elevation sales a strong market share with 17 per cent of the physical market, with its disc distribution of Paramount Home Entertainment, Lionsgate, and Studiocanal among others.

Futuresource Consulting principal analyst, head of entertainment James Duvall said, “A return to a full year of new release content in 2022 has helped ensure the digital transactional market moves back into growth, even though UK consumers are struggling against rising inflation and increased energy costs. The latest blockbuster cinematic content, award winning originals and an ever-growing array of ways to watch movies and TV means that consumers have a rich vein of content available at their fingertips, evident by the YoY growth in spend across box office, pay-TV and SVoD.”