Leisure in lockdown: The biggest winners and losers

With the UK in a varying state of lockdown for almost a year now, consumer spending has seen some quite dramatic shifts. Arguably the sector with the clearest swing has been leisure. As data from the Entertainment Retailers Association reveals, the well-documented collapse of the travel industry led to falls in retail spending in 2020 of 66 and 44 percent for international and domestic holidays, respectively.

Music, video and games, however recorded a record £9.26 billion in spending, equating to an impressive growth rate of 18 percent. Adding to this, entertainment hardware also enjoyed an increase of 3.7 percent. As described by ERA CEO Kim Bayley, “the entertainment market was already growing without coronavirus, but with much of the leisure sector shuttered due to lockdown, music, video and games were in the right place at the right time.”