Elsewhere, ERA said video was the most popular form of home entertainment, with cinephiles and telly addicts spending more than £5bn on streaming services, movie rentals and DVDs.

The biggest-selling title of the year was the comic book movie Deadpool & Wolverine, with sales of 561,917, more than 80% of which were digital.

Video games saw a drop in revenue, from £4.8bn in 2023 to £4.6bn last year.

The figures reflect a year of high-profile flops, with A-list games like Concord, Suicide Squad and Skull & Bones all failing to find an audience.

There was also a huge shift away from boxed physical games, whose sales fell by 35%.

The biggest-selling game of the year was once again EA Sports FC 25 – formerly known as FIFA – which sold 2.9m copies, 80% of them in digital formats.

However, only four of the games in the top 10 were new releases, and two of those were updates to existing franchises.

The power of Nintendo’s Switch was also apparent, with half of the top 10 including games comprised of titles that are exclusive to the console.