New data from Kantar Worldpanel has revealed that the physical entertainment sector is back in growth for the first time more than three years, while HMV increased its market share.
The sector grew 2.2% year-on-year, driven by a 26% surge in the video games market. Sales of physical music declined 5.4%, while video decreased by 4.8%.
Amazon is still the largest retailer for physical entertainment, growing share by 0.3 percentage points year-on-year to hold 20.8% of the market. However, it was HMV that made the biggest gains: increasing market share by 2.3 percentage points to stand at 18.1%.
Olivia Moore, analyst at Kantar Worldpanel, said: “Already the top seller of music, the past quarter has seen HMV leapfrog Amazon to become number one for sales of physical video too. The retailer increased its share of the video market with the help of a strong performance in new film releases – up 6.0 percentage points to stand at 22.5% – while Amazon’s share remained flat at 20.2%.”
eBay’s share increased by 0.1%, while Tesco (0.8%), Asda (1.5%), Morrisons (0.2%) and Zavvi (0.2%) all suffered declines.
Now… That’s What I Call Music 97 dominated the music sector, while Beauty And The Beast, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2 and Logan were the top video performers of the quarter.
Moore added: “In further good news for the video category, digital purchasing nudged the total transactional market – as opposed to streaming or subscription – into 4% growth, offsetting continuing declines in physical transactional sales. This is the best performance we’ve seen for several years. Driven by popular new releases, transactional digital welcomed 600,000 new shoppers in the past 12 weeks, suggesting the sector is making some headway in its battle against declining disc sales and the rise of subscription services.”
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