Amazon boosts its entertainment market share as GAME drops 3%

Supermarkets and Amazon have boosted their entertainment market share at the expense of GAME and HMV.

Kantar Worldpanel’s Entertainment Retailer Barometer report states that Amazon made the biggest market share gains for the 12 weeks ending March 17th 2013.

The numbers include sales of physical video games, games and digital music sales.

It reports that Amazon boosted its market share from 18.9 per cent in the same period in 2012 to 21.8 per cent his year – a 2.9 per cent annual increase.

Also on the up were the UK’s three biggest supermarkets with Tesco (2.2%), Sainsbury’s (1.2%) and Asda (0.1%) also posting annual games.

Less good was the news for GAME, which having lost around half of its store count in the last 12 months saw its market share slide by three per cent. Also down was HMV (-1.5%), Play.com (-1.1%) and Morrisons (-0.7%).

This leaves Amazon with the highest entertainment market share (21.8%) followed by HMV (17.6 per cent), Tesco (12.2%), Asda (10.5%), Sainsbury’s (6.5%) and, in sixth place, GAME (4.3%).

When video games are considered in isolation, however, GAME remains the market leader.

One potential stumbling block for the ever dominant Amazon is the games market, where Game continues to dominate and is the biggest retailer,” Kantar Worldpanel’s consumer insight director Fiona Keenan stated.

Although its market share has dropped at a total entertainment level, this is mainly as a result of video games making up a smaller share of the wider entertainment market. When we look just within the games market the retailer is performing strongly and is well placed to pick up any HMV games customers that may be looking elsewhere.”