Reports: Entertainment and Fandom

This report presents a snapshot of behaviours and demographic data on weekly active users (WAUs) of key games subscription services. It includes the following games subscription service segments: Apple Arcade EA Play / EA Play Pro Nintendo Switch Online PlayStation Now PlayStation Plus Stadia Ubisoft+ Xbox Live Xbox Game Pass The data in this report is from MIDiA Research’s Q3 2022 consumer survey.

Audience engagement with subscription video on demand (SVOD) services is sliding, with multi-tasking on social media often relegating shows to background viewing. Social media is the threat, but also the catalyst for a radical recalibration of the SVOD viewing experience that will help these services claw back what is lost.

The audiobook market is at an important stage of its evolution. Similar to podcasts, the niche format is trying to grow amid heightened competition for consumers’ time and attention, while the looming recession puts subscriptions growth and retention under pressure.

Coronavirus pandemic work patterns are now ingrained in the United States, where 42% of consumers work from home and a fifth are hybrid workers. In the ‘new normal’, home workers spend less time on both digital and in-person entertainment compared to those who commute.

Despite the hyper-saturated music landscape, music discovery is generally not a problem for most consumers. Gen Z and millennials have similar music discovery habits, but gen Z struggle slightly more with discovery and are more influenced by TikTok, while millennials are perhaps the last generation to see radio as a main source of music discovery.

The role of film in popular culture and the evolution of video streaming has reached an inflection point. After the near death of the box office in 2020, and the subsequent shattering of the box office window by studios desperate to generate returns on pre-Covid investments, film is once again at an inflection point.

In this report, MIDiA Research analysts present their predictions for what will be the big trends in digital media and tech across music, video, games, marketing, audio and cultural trends in 2023 and beyond. Themes for 2023: Cost-of-living crunch: Entertainment spending will weaken, but some formats will fare better than others Perceived value will be king: As economic conditions worsen, consumers will seek out better value for money, not just ways to reduce spend The end of disruption: Following two decades of disruption, consumer tech is entering a ‘holding’ phase, accentuated by the economic downturn Scarcity revival: The post-lockdown thirst for ‘in real life’ (IRL) experiences will combine with digital fatigue to place a new premium on scarce, IRL experiences in 2023 Community repurposed: The value of community will come to the fore in 2023, as entertainment increasingly becomes scene-led The rise of the moment: The immediacy of ‘now’ will find its fullest expression in social and music fusion in 2023 The forking of culture: Cultural intermediaries will provide access to subscenes for larger audiences The authenticity crisis: In an era of replication, authenticity will stand out The decoupling of global distribution: A changing geo-political landscape is turning back the clock on a vision for global markets in entertainment.

This bundle contains three of our most recent esports reports, providing you with a wide selection of insights and content from our analysts. Take this opportunity to get some of our most recent data at a discounted price. Esports viewers update. A valuable segment with a (solvable) growth problem Esports currently struggle to attract consumers beyond esports enthusiasts and players of esport-centric titles.

Esports organisations are past the initial ‘hype stage’. They are now in a phase where they need to make their business models work commercially. The ongoing adverse macroeconomic climate only exacerbates this. Sustainable long-term growth for esports organisations lies in the wider, gamer-related, entertainment culture – not just in the competitive part of esports alone.

While mainstream media tends to focus on podcast growth in Western territories, understanding digital-audio consumption on a global scale will be key to future growth. Each territory has unique listener demographics and genre preferences that present various opportunities for podcast platforms, illustrating that podcast habits vary globally.

The rise of attention inflation means that consumers are maximising their limited time by multitasking between various formats, spurring a rise in background consumption. This creates a “new” space for platforms to compete for consumers’ time. Among entertainment formats, audio is best placed to conquer background listening, but music streaming is more easily relegated to the background than podcasts.

With streaming music now in its mature growth stage in most leading music markets, differentiation will be key to unlocking further growth pockets. While this will likely require innovation in both product and licensing, there are already clear signs that the streaming services are developing userbases with distinct and varied behaviours and characteristics.

This bundle contains three of our most recent video reports, providing you with a wide selection of insights and content from our analysts. Take this opportunity to get some of our most recent data at a discounted price. Friction TV:Addressing the user experience disconnect in streaming TV Streaming TV is now the default way to consume TV content.

This bundle contains three of our most recent games strategy reports, providing you with a wide selection of insights and content from our analysts. Take this opportunity to get some of our most recent data at a discounted price. Games’ cultural role in the 2020s Over time, games have carved out their role from the cultural fringes, through tobecoming a firmly established part of digital-consumer culture.

This bundle contains three of our most recent games marketing reports, providing you with a wide selection of insights and content from our analysts. Take this opportunity to get some of our most recent data at a discounted price. Profiling single-player versus multiplayer gamers: A generational changing of the guard Though single player remains the preferred games genre for now, multiplayer modes are catching up, particularly among younger gamer segments.

A key challenge confronting the video streaming landscape in the current attention inflation era is maintaining engagement. Up until now, video streaming has been fixated on growth. In a saturated marketplace buffeted by the cost-of-living crisis, the strategic focus has shifted towards retention both of in terms of subscribers for subscription video on demand (SVOD) and users for ad-support video on demand (AVOD).

Smart-TV-owning gamers skew older and combine increased consumption spend with an increased willingness to pay for content and entertainment more broadly. Smart-TV owners over-index for games consumption and in-game spending,offering an unparalleled platform distribution opportunity for cross-platform gamesdistributors such as Xbox Game Pass.

Audiences are changing the ways they interact with entertainment, as well as how they respond to advertising and marketing designed to promote it. Audiences are increasingly creative and engage in lean-through behaviours, are less tolerant of ads, and want more authenticity in their digital social lives.

Audiences are becoming ever-more creative and this proclivity will come into its own over the coming period of economic, social, and political turbulence. To reconnect with each other while conserving their financial resources, these audiences will increasingly employ their digital-savvy pandemic learnings in the way that they consume entertainment itself.

Investments from major audience platforms in audio infrastructure, such as hosting platforms and advertising, kickstarted the growth of the podcast market. With the basic infrastructure now in place, it is time for the major platforms to focus on growing the format by expanding listenership and user experience.