Consumer spending on video entertainment in the U.K....
Consumer spending on video entertainment in the U.K. remained flat for 2013 at 2.2 billion pounds due to the continuing overall decline in packaged media, the British Video Association reported Tuesday. “Video entertainment is still dominated by physical formats,” with…
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more than 162.2 million units sold in 2013, the BVA said. On monetary terms, discs represented 73 percent of the total video retail and rental commerce for the year, it said. But retail spending on packaged media fell 6.8 percent to 1.4 billion pounds and rental spending for physical discs declined 24 percent to 197 billion pounds, it said. DVD unit sales fell by 11.5 percent, “as video audiences changed their mix of format use,” including a 12.4 percent increase in Blu-ray unit sales and a growing “ownership” of content bought through digital delivery, it said. Blu-ray sales on a monetary basis jumped 10 percent for the year, the BVA said, without giving a monetary breakout. The 40.2 percent rise in revenue from digital video entertainment to 621 million pounds “reflects the growing number of people who are using connected devices and the increasing ease of access to video services in and out of the home, driven by the strong demand for the smaller tablets and jumbo smart TVs,” the BVA said. “Current estimates suggest that over 10 million tablets have been sold this year alone, alongside 1.8 million smart TVs, as new models are launched and the prices of digital technology continue to fall.” Digital delivery accounted for 27 percent of overall spending for the year, the BVA said. The 2013 results “demonstrate that the millions of people who bought video titles as Christmas presents are joined by millions more who just love watching video all year round, in both physical and digital formats,” said Lavinia Carey, the BVA’s director general.