Adele Pips FIFA to the Post

According to the Entertainment Retailer’s Association (ERA) annual entertainment chart, Adele’s ‘25’ was the top selling entertainment product of 2015, beating the likes of FIFA, Paddington and Call of Duty.

The ERA chart is based on data from Official Charts Company alongside its equivalents in the video games and film markets. ‘25’ outsold annual video game update FIFA 16 by 88,771, shifting a reported 2, 604, 850 copies.

Of course, there is a significant disparity in what these products are sold for, with an album averaging £7.80 whilst a boxed video game usually costs approx. £40, with digital copies costing more, at least initially.

But the focus isn’t on turnover- this is a positive news story for an industry whose offerings are usually toppled by releases in other sectors.

Ed Sheeran’s ‘X’ was the second highest-selling music product in 2015, with just over 1m sales in the year.

The combined music, video and games markets reached an all-time high of £6.1 billion in 2015 thanks to surging digital revenues. Entertainment sales had previously been in decline for the last ten years, having peaked at £6.04 billion in 2004 and hitting a low of £5.2 billion in 2012. In 2015, video finished up by 1.5%, music by 3.5% and games by 10%. Interestingly, CDs showed stronger resilience than downloads last year; the former saw a 3.7% decline last year compared to 13% for downloads.

ERA CEO Kim Bayley said: “It is clearly way too soon to write off the CD or other disc-based formats. Hopefully we have now all learned the lesson of the vinyl LP that older formats can happily co-exist with newer ways of enjoying entertainment. The fact is that different formats provide different benefits to different groups of entertainment fans. That diversity is proving to be the entertainment market’s greatest strength”.

See the Top 20 here.