Top Gun: Maverick and Harry Styles helped drive the UK home entertainment market to a record value of £11.1 billion last year, according to the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA).
Preliminary figures from the trade body indicate the total was 6.9% up on 2021 and 39% up on the last pre-pandemic year of 2019.
The leading titles in each sector were Fifa 23 in games, the Top Gun sequel starring Tom Cruise in video, and former One Direction star Styles’ third album Harry’s House in music.
The fastest growing sector in 2022 was video, up 14.4% to £4.43 billion followed by music, up 3% to £1.99 billion and games up 2.3% to £4.66 billion.
The ERA said the main driver of growth continued to be streaming and digital formats which reached £10.1 billion, up 8.4% on 2021.
Final full year figures will be confirmed in the ERA yearbook published in March.
ERA chairman Ben Drury said: “Despite pandemic, political uncertainty and recession, entertainment has continued to soar.
“Growth of nearly 40% since 2019 is extraordinary. Few would have believed we would retain the huge bounce in revenues seen when the Covid lockdown kept people at home, but these numbers show that even amid recession, people are determined to maintain their spending on entertainment.
“This is a huge vote of confidence in the attractiveness of what our member’s offer whether they be small independent record shops or global streaming platforms.”
Music sales grew by 3% to £1.99 billion in 2022 to their highest level since 2003 and nearly double the level in 2013.
The main driver of growth was streaming services such as Spotify, YouTube, Amazon and Apple, with subscription streaming revenues growing by 5% to £1.66 billion.
Physical sales fell slightly but saw vinyl formats sustain growth as CD sales dropped.
According to the ERA, Styles produced the year’s biggest-selling album with Harry’s House and biggest selling single with As It Was.
Meanwhile, 2022 saw video revenues up by 14.4% to £4.43 billion, primarily driven by subscription streaming from Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney+ and Now.
Subscription video-on-demand grew by 17.6% compared with 2021 and now accounts for 87% of the video market.
Top Gun: Maverick was the biggest video title of the year with 1.1 million copies sold – more than 800,000 of them as “electronic sell-throughs” or downloads.
The film sees Hollywood star Cruise reprise the role of US naval aviator Pete Mitchell and was released 36 years after the 1986 original.
It was originally due for release in July 2019 but was repeatedly pushed back due to the coronavirus pandemic.