As usual, the British trade association ERA was the first to publish preliminary market data for the past entertainment year. According to this data, the British games market returned to significant growth. However, ERA does not take hardware sales into account.
In fact, the data from the ERA (The Digital Entertainment and Retail Association) and that from the British industry association UKIE are not 100% comparable, even though both associations work with Nielsen/GfK and Omdia. The ERA uses Omdia forecasts and supplements them with GSD data, while the UKIE only releases data once the final figures are available. In addition, the ERA completely ignores the hardware segment.
However, even if the results differ in some cases, the basic trend is similar for both sources. And so the British gaming market can look back on a successful year in 2025. According to ERA, game sales in the UK rose from £4.99 billion in 2024 to £5.37 billion in 2025. With an increase of 7.4%, growth was even above the average for all three entertainment markets. In addition to the games sector, ERA also publishes data on the UK music and film markets. The increase in sales for all three industries in 2025 was 7.1 percent. A total of £13.26 billion was generated from games, film, and music.
According to ERA, only £318.8 million was generated with physical games in 2025. The best-selling game was EA Sports FC 26, which sold over 1.97 million units digitally and physically in the UK.
"Growth in the games market slowed considerably after the incredible 27.9% gains seen in the pandemic year of 2020, but continuing innovation saw it return to form in grand style in 2025. We have strong hopes that it will maintain this momentum into 2026," says Kim Bayley, CEO of ERA.
Further developments in the area of subscriptions are also likely to be interesting. The ERA described the games market as “the last bastion in entertainment of ownership rather than access models.” Almost 45% of all sales were generated by customers who purchase a product rather than just access via a service. For music, the figure is 16.6%, and for video, only 7.2%.
