Britain’s free time now runs through the phone. Ofcom’s Online Nation report found that UK adults spend an average of 4 hours 30 minutes a day online outside work, ten minutes more than a year earlier, and most of it on smartphones. Not all of that is leisure. But the entertainment categories that live on a screen have grown with it, and the money has followed.
The competition for those hours is wide. Video streamers, mobile games, music apps, ticketing platforms and gambling sites all pull on the same evening, and online casino RocketPlay is one of the gambling names in that mix. No single official statistic adds it all up, so the picture below is pieced together from the main trade and regulatory sources.
Video and Games Take the Biggest Share
The Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) tracks consumer spending on video, music and games. For 2025 it reported a record £13.3bn, up 7.1%, at a time when forecasts for UK GDP growth sat at 1.5%.
Video is the largest of the three at £5.44bn, up 8%, and subscription streaming accounts for £4.9bn of that. Physical discs keep shrinking: DVD and Blu-ray sales fell 4.7%. Games brought in £5.4bn, up 7.4%, with mobile games growing faster than the category as a whole. About 45% of games revenue came from outright purchases rather than subscriptions, so the market has not moved entirely to rentals.
Live Events Still Draw the Crowds
Digital has not emptied the venues. UK Music put the industry’s contribution at £8bn in 2024, up from £7.6bn the year before, supporting 220,000 full-time equivalent jobs. A separate study by LIVE and CGA by NIQ measured consumer spending on live music alone at £6.7bn, a record and more than £2bn above 2019. Concerts made up about three quarters of that and festivals the rest.
The two reports measure different things, so the figures overlap and shouldn’t be added together. The same study flags a weak spot: grassroots venues are exposed to higher wage and National Insurance costs. For those rooms the squeeze comes from costs, not from streaming.
Gambling Is One Slice, and a Different Kind of Spend
Remote casino, betting and bingo generated £6.9bn in gross gambling yield in 2023/24, according to the Gambling Commission. That puts it on a similar scale to UK video or games spending, but the comparison needs care. Gross gambling yield is what is left of players’ stakes once winnings have been paid, so it measures player losses, not the price of content. The figure also covers operators licensed in Great Britain only. Sites licensed elsewhere are outside it.
The shift away from physical venues is real but gradual. The Commission counted 5,825 betting shops at 31 March 2025, down 106, or 1.8%, on the year. That is a slow squeeze rather than a collapse, and it sits alongside a remote sector that kept growing.
Attention Is Concentrated
Whatever the product, it reaches customers through a small number of channels. Ofcom’s figures show how narrow they are:
- YouTube reached 94% of adult internet users in May 2025 and averaged 51 minutes a day
- Facebook and Messenger reached 93% of adults, and WhatsApp 90%
- The average adult used 41 apps a month
- Alphabet and Meta together account for more than half of the time UK users spend online
For a streaming service, a games studio or a festival promoter, that means paying for visibility on platforms they don’t control. Subscription models are shifting too. ERA’s 2025 data, as reported by City AM, showed ad-supported plans overtaking ad-free ones in subscriber numbers for the first time.
What the Numbers Leave Out
Each source above has its own boundaries. ERA covers video, music and games, and nothing on sport streaming, fitness apps, travel booking or dining. UK Music reports value added, LIVE reports consumer spending, and the Gambling Commission reports yield. None of them is a total for “leisure”.
What they do agree on is direction. Spending on screen-based entertainment is growing faster than the wider economy, live events are holding up, and physical formats and high-street venues are losing ground slowly. Gambling sits inside that picture as a regulated product with its own rules, one category among several rather than the whole story.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It does not constitute legal, financial, or gambling advice. Online gambling carries risks, and statistically players stand a higher chance of losing their stake. You should only gamble what you can afford to lose, and participate if you are over the legal age in your jurisdiction. Always gamble responsibly and within your means. If you or someone you know is experiencing problems with gambling, seek help from a professional support service such as GamCare or BeGambleAware.