Figures released by the British Association for Screen Entertainment (BASE) based on data from The Official Charts Company and IHS Markit show that consumer spend in the video category rose by 2.2 per cent in 2016 bringing the total value of the category to £2.25 billion (€2.63bn).

While ownership remains vital to the category and represents a massive 49 per cent of category value, 2016 has also seen rental, or streaming overtake ownership, with 51 per cent of value coming from consumers choosing to rent or stream. Highlighting the truly multichannel nature of the category, and the flexibility of content delivery of distributors to consumers.

Digital video services continued to show strong growth in 2016 increasing 23 per cent year-on-year and furthermore the overall audio-visual industry grew 5.9 per cent across the year to a massive £10.98 billion. Demonstrating consumers love for the continued variety of content in entertainment and the flexibility of choice they have in terms of how they consume content, be that physically or digitally.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens lead the sales of the category with over 2.3 million copies passing through physical and digital retail, making it the best-selling video title of the year.

The format sales breakdown of Star Wars: The Force Awakens illustrates that consumers are taking full advantage of the format choice from the industry, with 51.5 per cent purchasing on DVD, 34.4 per cent Blu-ray and 14.1 per cent Digital.

This is the second home entertainment record for Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2016 as the title took the mantle for fastest ever selling Blu-ray title earlier in the year, selling through 531,949 Blu-ray copies in the first week of release. The film is also the biggest film ever released at the UK box office.

Following the success of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, other top successes in the film category included James Bond: Spectre and Ryan Reynolds’ anti-hero Deadpool both selling through over one million copies and each approaching sales of over a quarter of a million digital copies.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens was predominantly filmed in Britain and with a star-studded British cast and crew it continued to play a key role in the 2016 end of year Official Video Charts.

Focusing on British talent, Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Spectre both lead the pack in the charts. The adaptation of Alan Bennett’s The Lady in the Van from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and the Kray biopic film, Legend from StudioCanal both ended the year in the top ten chart.

Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, had another stellar year, dominating both value and volume market share, taking 20.2 per cent share of volume and 18.5 per cent share of value. Universal Pictures’ breadth of content in 2016 has seen the distributor deliver content for every audience. Universal in 2016 has had the largest number of titles to surpass 100k units sales of any distributor. The 38 titles to have passed this milestone range from animated new releases such as The Secret Life of Pets to out of this world blockbusters such as Star Trek Beyond (label of Paramount), hard hitting drama Straight Out of Compton, and laugh out loud Dad’s Army as well as stand-up comedy, Billy Connolly’s High Horse Tour Live. In addition, big hitting catalogue titles such as Minions, Jurassic World and Fifty Shades of Grey, have all sold more than 100k units in 2016 helping move them all to over 1 million units since first released in 2015. Even children’s pre-school titles have seen sales over 100k unit this year with Paw Patrol Pups And The Pirate Treasure (label of Paramount) being one of four from the franchise to surpass this threshold.

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment UK led the Blu-ray market with 20.8 per cent volume and 21.2 per cent value share thanks to the combined success of Spectre, Deadpool, The Martian and The Revenant.

Further appetite for high quality content was demonstrated by consumers as early adopters bought into the 4K UHD market. The category has now released 96 titles into the market on this new format, with Deadpool from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment UK, proving to be the most popular selling through over eleven thousand units.

Evergreen franchise Game of Thrones (Warner Bros) dominated the TV charts in 2016, with the Complete Fifth Season leading the pack selling through more than 470,000 units. Equating to overall franchise sales in 2016 of 1 million units versus the 891,000 units sold in 2015.

Home-grown talent from BBC Worldwide took three spots in the end of year TV chart with Planet Earth II selling over 130k units in just four weeks, The Best of Strictly Come Dancing: Len’s Grand Final and Peter Kay’s Car Share (Series 1), all charting in the Top 10 TV titles of the year.

2016 has been a year of particularly high quality British drama, The Night Manager from Sony has sold through 130k copies in 40 weeks, while ITV’s Victoria sold 54k copies in 12 weeks and War & Peace from the BBC has sold 50k copies in 47 weeks. While ITV’s new version of the vintage masterpiece Poldark continued to sell at a great rate, selling through 40k copies in 2016.

Across other Official Video Chart genres, Universal Pictures took the leading spot for Children’s title with The Secret Life of Pets, while Ron Howard’s Beatles film, Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years, from StudioCanal (distributed by Elevation Sales) topped the Official Music on Video Chart in 2016. Charlotte’s 3 Minute Belly Blitz, held tight for Universal Pictures at the top of the Official Sports and Fitness Video Chart and the Official Special Interest Chart for 2016 was dominated by Billy Connolly – High Horse Tour Live, another hit for Universal Pictures.

“It has been another year of success for the video category, the figures from 2016 demonstrate that consumers continue to engage in not only the variety of content available, but also the wide variety of ways they can access content,” noted Liz Bales, Chief Executive, BASE. “Distributors are managing the changing eco-system of viewing preference with great flexibility to ensure that ownership and rental, or, streaming options are widely available to give consumers the greatest choice when it comes to how they want to enjoy the variety of content available.”

“The continued evolution of the category with the introduction of 4K UHD, the continued love of disc and the increasing popularity in digital services illustrates that convenience of choice for consumers is key to success in the category,” she concluded.

Dean Pappadakis, Category and Commercial Director, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment, said the performance of Star Wars: The Force Awakens was not only a reflection of the overwhelming endurance of the franchise, but also a reflection of consumer thirst to own and engage with quality content on a format that fits with their lifestyle. “Looking at the format breakdown and mapping against demographics, it’s easy to see that Star Wars not only continues to retain core fans but also attract new fans to the franchise, and has overall made a solid contribution to boosting the consumer base of the video category overall,” he added.

Robert Price, Chairman, BASE/Managing Director Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment UK, said: “When you have the right mix of great content, strong delivery channels, innovative retail partnerships and disruptive marketing campaigns it’s easy to see why the home entertainment industry continues to captivate attention and deliver robust sales for UK businesses. In 2017, delivery will be critical to the success of our industry and how agile we can be with the exciting technological opportunities up ahead.”

“Trends previously observed have continued and expanded throughout 2016,” advised Richard Cooper, Head of Video at global information supplier, IHS Markit. “Digital video continues to grow, now more than fully compensating for the declines in physical video. Subscription services remain the key driver of this growth and this market has also evolved over 2016. The two key players in this market, Amazon and Netflix, now both offering the ability for UK subscribers to watch offline; enabling access to extensive catalogues without the need for mobile internet. Digital retail and rental markets have also expanded with players such as Sky extending their offer to include TV content, whilst Amazon has demonstrated that the combination of SVoD and transactional promotes, rather than cannibalises, both.”

Charts

Top five charts for each video format and genre below (all © Official Charts Company)

Official Video Chart 2016

(All DVD & Blu-ray)

Official DVD Chart 2016

Official Blu-ray Chart 2016

Official Film On Video Chart 2016

Official Children’s Video Chart 2016

Official TV on Video Chart 2016

Official Music on Video Chart 2016

Official Sports and Fitness Video Chart 2016

Official Special Interest Video Chart 2016

Other posts by Colin Mann:

1. Analysis: SVoDs drive $220bn content spend
2. A TikToking clock heading towards regeneration – or not?
3. European pay-radio: Getting ready

Categories: Articles, Content, Markets, OTT, OTT, Portable Media, Premium, Research, VOD