Data: UK M&E industry valued at £30bn in 2024
January 28, 2025
Full market data for 2024 has been released by the British Association for Screen Entertainment (BASE) in association with the Official Charts Company that confirms that video is officially the most popular form of entertainment in the UK.
The total value of the media and entertainment industry in the UK in 2024 was £30 billion (€28.6bn) which includes transactional and pay-TV home entertainment, cinema, games and music. The value of the UK Home Entertainment Category accounted for 17 per cent of that number and grew to £5.1 billion in 2024 inclusive of all SVoD, PVoD and VOD, PEST and EST, DVD, Blu-ray, 4K UHD, and boxsets. The total value of the UK Screen sector rose to £12.4 billion.
This growth is despite the impact of the 2023 Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) and Writers Guild of America (WGA) strikes on the film slate at the beginning of 2024, and the subsequent delays on film and TV production. A resurging slate throughout the year ensured the UK Box Office rose in the final quarter of 2024, delivering a value of £145 million in November 2024 across films such as Wicked, Paddington in Peru, Moana 2, Gladiator 2, and Mufasa: The Lion King. The strength of the 2025 slate, which includes Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy, Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning, Superman, Wicked: For Good and Avatar: Fire and Ash, plays a huge part in the prediction that Home Entertainment will grow by 2.4 per cent in value in the UK in 2025.
The total number of films released across transactional Home Entertainment was 1,605, complementing the 1,114 films released in cinemas across the year. The total number of films released to buy or rent at home at a premium price (Premium VoD and/or Premium EST (PEST)) went up to 62 in 2024, as audiences chose to watch fresh-from-cinema films at home as soon as they were released on Digital Service Providers (DSPS).
Liz Bales, Chief Executive, BASE commented: “Visual Entertainment is the most popular entertainment pastime in the UK and audiences make savvy choices across the spectrum of Home Entertainment formats available to them, spending in excess of £5 billion. Premium digital formats have already set records in 2025, just a few weeks into the year: Wicked was released on PVoD and PEST on January 3rd and became the most popular Premium title since records began in the UK. Ad revenue has added £1.7 billion across the range of online video services in the UK, and £400 million to consumer spend on SVoD, while simultaneously there were 73 more FAST channels launched across all FAST services in the UK since the beginning of the year, where the total number is now well over 700, enabled by the likes of Samsung, LG, Roku and others to bring the digital high-street directly to consumers living rooms. While audiences love film and TV shows the industry will continue to grow and evolve, to offer more and better.”
Consumer uptake of SVoD services in 2024 rose to 54.1 million (+2 per cent YoY) with 70 per cent of UK subscribers choosing services that include ads for a reduced subscription fee. The value of the sector rose to £4.5 billion (+8 per cent YoY) supported by the introduction of advertising tiers. The addition of advertising contributed to a 36 per cent YoY growth for UK premium advertising-supported online video revenue (including hybrid SVoD advertising, Premium AVoD and FAST) which rose to £1.7 billion.
The Digital High Street continued to evolve, with ‘bundling’ of multiple streaming services under one offer from hardware suppliers such as SKY, LG, and SAMSUNG, proving popular with audiences, and driving growth for the industry, where one in five global online video subscriptions are now part of a ‘bundle’ of services. The most popular individual streaming service in the UK in 2024 was Netflix, followed by Prime Video and Disney+. The revenue from free channels to view supported by ads (Free Ad Supported Television or FAST) is predicted to double in the next five years, rising to £9.7 billion by 2029. Monthly Average Users (MAU’s) for services offering FAST channels have more than doubled from 5 per cent in Q3 2021 to 13 per cent in Q3 2024, driven primarily by Pluto, Samsung TV+, LG Channels, and Freevee, which has now moved its FAST channels to Prime Video.