Job market and economic contribution

2018 Stats

• Overall in 2016, the UK games industry provided 47,620 FTE jobs and contibuted £2.87bn in GVA to the UK economy. (Olsberg SPI / BFI, Oct 2016)

• The UK games industry directly employs 20,430 FTEs in development, publishing and retail roles, which contibute £1.52bn in direct GVA to the economy. (Olsberg SPI / BFI, Oct 2016)

Subsector	Employment (FTEs)	GVA (£m)
Publishing	2,300	526.6
Digital Retail	310	31.7
Physical Retail	3,980	132.0
Total	20,430	1.52

• The economic impact of the growing UK Esports sector was also assessed for the first time and was shown to have supported 470 FTE jobs and contributed £18.4m in GVA in 2016. (Olsberg SPI / BFI, Oct 2016)

• In 2016, the UK games industry spent £1.25bn on game development. (Olsberg SPI / BFI, Oct 2016)

• In the period 2015-2017, there was at least £1.75bn of inward investment in the UK games industry. (Olsberg SPI / BFI, Oct 2016)

• The VGTR supports 9,240 FTE jobs across the UK games industry, including 4,320 directly in development roles (31% of the total UK development workforce). (Olsberg SPI / BFI, Oct 2016)

• VGTR games represented £389.9m of UK development spend, 31% of the total development spend. Overall, projects supported by the VGTR contibuted£525m in GVA to the UK economy and £158m in tax revenue. (Olsberg SPI / BFI, Oct 2016)

• 68% of VGTR-supported games would not be made in the UK, or at all, without the relief in place. (Olsberg SPI / BFI, Oct 2016)

• For every £1 the Government invested into the games sector via VGTR, an additional £4 in GVA was generated for the UK economy. (Olsberg SPI / BFI, Oct 2016)
• Of all the screen sector tax reliefs, the games sector was shown to have the highest rate of productivity, where each employee generated an average of £83,800 in GVA for the economy, significantly above the national industrial average of £62,100. (Olsberg SPI / BFI, Oct 2016)