Last year, women contributed just under half of all video gaming revenue in the UK but are the demographic driving growth in the industry, new research reveals.

This is according to new research from Ipsos MORI and the Interactive Software Federation of Europe, in a partnership designed to produce “investment grade” insights into the video gaming market. (For the full insights, read WARC’s in-depth report: UK insights on women and gaming in 2020)

Why it matters: Women account for almost half of the total gaming market in the UK. Too often, the gaming world is seen as an extremely male environment; while there are some differences between the genders, the research adds to a richer understanding of who we’re talking about when we talk about gaming.

The insights come from the partnership’s Gametrack project, a quarterly report on the offline responses to a survey from 1000 adults, along with a 3000-strong online survey panel. In addition, the research carries insights from social listening techniques, app usage data and proprietary games sales chart information.

More than half (53%) of the UK population aged 6-64 – or 25.3 million people – play games on any device in the UK.

The UK is a particularly useful source of insight, given the average UK gamer’s 11 hours a week of play, far higher than the European average, according to Eduardo Mena, Research Director at Ipsos MORI, speaking at the MRS Sports and Gaming Conference.

The numbers: Of the total 25.3 million gamers in the UK, the breakdown between men and women is 53:47, or 13.5 million men and 11.8 million women.

Gaming is big business: in the UK alone, videogame sales revenue in 2019 was £3.6 billion.

As much as £1.5 billion of that £3.6 billion total was spent by women, 13% up on their 2018 spending. Looking back over the last five years of video game revenue, women are responsible for over half of the growth during that time.

In particular, app-based gaming on smart devices is where women gamers are dominating, according to the Ipsos data, with 53% of the spend in this category coming from women, and well over a million more players of this kind than men.

Sourced from WARC