UK home entertainment sector, including streaming, surpasses £5bn for the first time

Posted by author January 29, 2025 Entertainment

Consumer spend across the UK home entertainment sector rose to £5.1bn in 2024, the highest ever recorded figure for the sector, and the first time it has passed the £5bn mark, according to figures provided by the British Association for Screen Entertainment (BASE).

The home entertainment sector includes all streaming video on demand (SVoD), digital and disc sales, as well as rentals.

The introduction of advertising-supported tiers across all SVoD added £400m to the consumer value of the UK home entertainment market in 2024.

The most popular streaming service in the UK in 2024 was Netflix (59% – 17.3m homes), followed by Amazon Prime Video (46% -13.4m homes) and Disney+(26% – 7.5m homes).

Scroll down for the top five titles across each format

Warner Bros. Discovery was the leading transactional distributor in the UK for the third year running with a 22.8% volume market share, led by number one title of the year Wonka, starring Timothée Chalamet, which sold 821,000 units across all home entertainment platforms.

Chalamet also starred in Dune: Part Two, which took the number two spot, selling 817,000 units. Oppenheimer was third, selling 713,000.

The value of the UK screen industry grew by 4.3% to £12.4bn, inclusive of SVoD, premium advertising-based video on demand (AVoD), transactional video on demand (TVoD), electronic sell-through (EST), physical, cinema and pay TV.

The total number of films released to buy or rent at home at a premium price – where SVoD subscribers pay a one-time fee for early access – went up by 15% to 62 in 2024 as audiences chose to watch films at home, as fresh from the cinema as possible. The average window from theatrical premiere to a premiere streaming debut was 40 days.

The total value of the digital transactional market remained stable in the UK in 2024 at a value of £381m, and is anticipated to rise by 2.4% in 2025.

Physical format Blu-ray 4k grew, with a 17.8% increase in value of sales, to £30.5m, bolstered by 4k re-releases of titles Aliens, The Terminator, The Crow and The Lord Of The Rings.

There were 73 more FAST channels launched across all FAST services in the UK since the beginning of the year, with the total number now over 700.