A report from the Entertainment Retailers Association has confirmed that in the first half of 2019, videogames generated far more income than any other sector of the UK’s entertainment industry.

According to the report, in the first half of 2019, UK consumers spent £1.561 billion on videogames, which compares favourably to £1.070 billion spent on video and £673 million spent on music. The figure for videogames revenue represented a 1.0 per cent rise on the same period last year, and accounted for an impressive 47.2 per cent of the total entertainment retail market.

The ERA’s CEO Kim Bayley said: “With January-June historically the quietest half of the year, this is another great result for entertainment. Digital services and physical retailers alike continue to innovate to expand the market for music, video, and games.”

The ERA’s report shone some interesting light on the revenue split between physical and digital sales of videogames. Of the overall £1.561 billion spend, physical videogames sales accounted for £184.9 million – down by 8.5 per cent on last year’s figures – while digital revenues rose 2.4 per cent to £1.376 billion.

Stunningly, the report also revealed that Grand Theft Auto V was the best-selling game in the first half of 2019, clocking sales of 361,312 units in the UK, followed by FIFA 19 with 360,588 units and Tom Clancy’s The Division 2 with 263,520 units. The latter is so far the best-selling game actually released in 2019, rather than the previous year, followed by Resident Evil 2 which shifted 239.495 units to occupy fifth place in the chart.

The report said: “Games remains by far the biggest sector accounting for nearly half of the combined music, video and games markets.” And that was despite the fact that the videogames market is massively skewed towards the second half of each year, with the biggest blockbusting releases scheduled to take advantage of the Christmas sales rush.

For more information on how videogames dominate the UK’s general entertainment retail sector, keep an eye on the ERA’s website.