HMV demise could kill 4% of games market; High Street entertainment share would plummet

The cost to the UK video games market should HMV fail to find a buyer could be as little as four per cent.

That’s thanks to HMV’s relatively small share of the UK games market. Nonetheless, its demise would theoretically leave the High Street with just a 16 per cent share of the UK’s entertainment spend – that’s down from 31 per cent just one year ago.

HMV’s total share of the physical and digital games and music market has fallen 3.5 per cent to 21 per cent since 2008, according to new data from Kantar Worldpanel. It currently stands second only to Amazon, which claims a 20.7 per cent share.

The knock suffered by the DVD and Blu-ray market could be significantly bigger – 12 per cent, in fact. Music could suffer to the tune of ten per cent.

The big ‘winners’ of any collapse, so to speak, are expected to be the supermarkets, with the big four combined set to land around 32 per cent of HMV’s former market. Amazon is estimated to land 29 per cent, further increasing its entertainment sector lead.

If HMV were to close completely, we expect the entertainment market to lose over 300m – this is over nine per cent of the total entertainment market value,” Kantar Worldpanel analyst Craig Armer stated.

Some shoppers will simply move to other retailers but the value generated from browsing and buying on impulse will be lost.

Although Amazon is likely to gain the most, HMV shoppers prefer physical stores meaning that any bricks ‘n’ mortar chains are likely to acquire slightly more of this lost spend than expected.”