Fifa 17 tops Star Wars: The Force Awakens as the UK’s best-selling entertainment product in 2016
In 2016, the UK’s entertainment market was highly competitive with titles from various industries fighting it out across physical and digital sales aisles, it was however EA Sports' Fifa 2017 football simulation game that took the top spot across video, music and gaming with 2.5 million sales.
Fifa 17
Research from the Entertainment Retail Trade Association (ERA) found that Fifa 17 topped a video games sector that endured a physical sales slump of 16.4% to £776m, offset by digital’s 12.1% growth to £2.1bn.
The sports title managed to top the return of Disney’s Star Wars franchise, the Force Awakens which served as the bestselling video product with 2.3 million units. On the subject, physical video revenues were down 16.9% to £893.6m, whereas digital sales were largely catalyzed by Netflix, Sky, Amazon and Apple up 22.8% to £1.309.3m.
In music, Now That’s What I Call Music 95 shifted 908,500 units making it the best-selling album of the year. Music revenues were up by under 5%, downloads were down by 26.8% and physical sales down 13%, but music subscription sales were up 65% thanks to the likes of Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon and Deezer.
Kim Bayley ERA chief executive, said: “The music, video and games industries were understandably nervous about the advent of new digital services, but these figures provide resounding evidence of the benefits of our members’ investment in innovation.
“To have added over £1bn in new revenues in just four years is an incredible achievement. To put it another way, take away today’s digital services and the entertainment market would be barely a third the size it is today.”