Digital movie rental is a transactional video category distinct from buying a digital title or paying for a subscription library. The clearest recent public measures show a mature UK rental market, a much larger subscription market, and U.S. reporting where rental figures are often grouped with other digital formats.
Key Digital Movie Rental Statistics
The following highlights cover market value, transactions, comparisons and recent changes:
- In 2024, UK digital rental consumer spending was £136.4 million.
- In 2024, UK digital rental volume was an estimated 31.0 million transactions.
- From 2023 to 2024, UK digital rental value fell 1.1%.
- From 2022 to 2024, UK digital rental value fell 3.9% using rounded published values.
- In 2024, digital rental represented 3% of the UK video market.
- In 2024, the UK total video market was worth £5,002.0 million.
- In 2024, UK digital rentals represented about 54.6% of non-SVOD digital-video transactions.
- In 2024, UK digital retail purchase value was £244.5 million.
- In 2024, UK SVOD value was £4,460.4 million.
- From 2023 to 2024, UK SVOD value grew 8.3%.
- In 2020, UK digital rental spending was £157 million.
- In 2020, digital rental held a 5% share of the UK video market.
- In 2024, U.S. VOD spending fell 2.8% according to preliminary reporting.
- In the fourth quarter of 2024, U.S. digital rental spending fell 10.4%.
- In full-year 2024, U.S. rentals of theatrical titles increased 2%.
- In 2023, U.S. digital entertainment purchases, rentals and subscriptions reached $41.4 billion.
- In 2023, U.S. overall home-entertainment spending reached $43 billion.
- Between 2022 and 2023, UK SVOD, connected-TV advertising and online transactional video increased their combined revenue share from 29% to 35%.
Contents
- UK digital movie rental market value and recent trend
- UK digital movie rental transactions and format mix
- Digital rental versus purchases and subscriptions
- Digital movie rental trends around the pandemic peak
- U.S. digital movie rental and transactional home entertainment
- Distribution, timing and measurement context
UK Digital Movie Rental Statistics: Market Value and Recent Trend
ERA’s 2025 yearbook identifies Digital Rental (VOD) as the closest directly reported UK rental category. Its digital-video value series is sourced to Futuresource Consulting, and the category should not be silently treated as a movie-only measure.
| Year | UK digital rental value | Measurement status |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | £142.2 million | Observed consumer spending |
| 2023 | £137.9 million | Observed consumer spending |
| 2024 | £136.4 million | Observed consumer spending |
Source: ERA Yearbook 2025. ERA reports that value fell 1.1% from 2023 to 2024.
Across 2022 to 2024, the rounded values indicate a 3.9% decline, a derived comparison that may vary slightly because the published figures are rounded.
Digital rental accounted for 3% of the UK video market in 2024, while the total video market reached £5,002.0 million. ERA’s total includes physical video, digital retail, digital rental and SVOD, so the total is broader than transactional movie rental.
The wider UK video market increased 6.9% in 2024. That contrast matters: overall market growth does not mean every format grew, and rental remained a relatively small share of total value.
UK Digital Movie Rental Data: Transactions and Format Mix
Transaction estimates provide a different view from consumer spending. Futuresource Consulting is credited in the ERA table for digital rental volume, while physical-rental volume is attributed to Omdia.
| Year | Digital rental transactions | Total digital video excluding SVOD | Physical rental transactions |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 32.7 million | 58.3 million | 2.2 million |
| 2023 | 31.3 million | 57.0 million | 1.7 million |
| 2024 | 31.0 million | 56.8 million | 1.3 million |
Source: ERA Yearbook 2025. Digital-rental volume fell 1.1% from 2023 to 2024, and the 2024 estimate was 31.0 million transactions.
Using the rounded 2024 estimates, digital rentals represented approximately 54.6% of non-SVOD digital-video transactions: 31.0 million rental transactions divided by 56.8 million total digital-video transactions excluding SVOD. This is a derived ratio, not a separately reported market-share statistic.
Physical rental volume declined from 2.2 million transactions in 2022 to 1.3 million in 2024. It is a useful format comparator, but it should not be combined with digital rental volume as though the two measures had identical collection methods.
Digital Rental Statistics Versus Purchases and Subscriptions
Rental, digital purchase and subscription access answer different consumer needs. ERA reports digital retail (EST) as a purchase category and SVOD as subscription access, neither of which is digital rental.
| UK category | 2022 value | 2023 value | 2024 value |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital rental (VOD) | £142.2m | £137.9m | £136.4m |
| Digital retail (EST) | £238.7m | £244.4m | £244.5m |
| SVOD | £3,900.7m | £4,120.4m | £4,460.4m |
Source: ERA Yearbook 2025. In 2024, rental value was approximately 59.6% of digital retail value, based on rounded values of £136.4 million and £244.5 million.
ERA’s 2024 digital retail film value was £197.0 million, compared with £47.5 million for digital retail television. These are purchase comparators, not rental spending.
SVOD value grew 8.3% from 2023 to 2024, reaching £4,460.4 million. Digital rental was approximately 3.0% of total digital-video value in 2024, using £136.4 million of rental value against £4,841.3 million in total digital video.
The comparison shows why “digital video” is not a synonym for “digital movie rental.” Subscription revenue dominates the UK digital-video value mix, while rentals are measured as individual transactions or purchases of access for a limited period.
Digital Movie Rental Trends Around the Pandemic Peak
The UK rental market was larger during the pandemic period than in the later ERA observations. ERA’s discussion reports £157 million of digital rental spending in 2020, when digital rental held a rounded 5% share of the UK video market.
For comparison, UK digital purchase spending was £310 million in 2020, representing nearly 10% of the video market. By 2024, purchase spending was £244.5 million, while rental spending was £136.4 million.
Using the rounded ERA discussion figure for 2020 and the 2024 table value, digital rental spending declined approximately 13.1% from 2020 to 2024. Digital purchase spending declined approximately 21.4% over the same comparison, using the rounded 2020 discussion figure and 2024 table value.
SVOD moved in the opposite direction. ERA states that UK SVOD value in 2024 was more than 75% larger than in 2020, although subscription access is not transactional rental.
Paid streaming households were estimated at 19.0 million in 2022, 18.5 million in 2023 and 18.6 million in 2024. These are SVOD household measures, not counts of digital-rental households.
U.S. Digital Movie Rental Statistics and Transactional Home Entertainment
U.S. reporting provides important scale context but less rental-only detail in the supplied annual figures. The DEG’s 2024 report frequently combines VOD rentals with EST purchases, and its figures are preliminary where noted.
- U.S. consumer spending on digital entertainment purchases, rentals and subscriptions reached $41.4 billion in 2023, up 19.3% from 2022.
- Overall U.S. digital and physical home-entertainment spending reached $43 billion in 2023, up 16.8% from 2022.
- U.S. digital transaction spending, including VOD and EST but excluding subscription streaming, fell about 7% in 2024.
- U.S. digital transaction spending fell 6% in the fourth quarter of 2024.
- U.S. VOD spending fell 2.8% for full-year 2024; DEG’s VOD category includes digital rentals and the figure is preliminary.
- U.S. digital rental spending fell 10.4% in the fourth quarter of 2024; this is a preliminary quarterly statement.
- U.S. rentals of theatrical titles increased 2% in full-year 2024, a subcategory of VOD rentals rather than all digital rentals.
- U.S. EST spending fell 10.2% in full-year 2024; EST is digital purchase, not rental.
Source: 2024 Year-End Digital Media Entertainment Report. These figures should not be read as a complete U.S. rental-only market total because several measures combine rental VOD, purchase EST, subscriptions or broader home entertainment.
The same report places U.S. AVOD and FAST revenue at $6.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2024, up 37.7%. That is an ad-supported and free-streaming comparator, not transactional rental revenue.
Digital Movie Rental Distribution, Timing and Measurement Context
Ofcom’s UK industry data helps place transactional video inside a wider commercial video ecosystem. It reports that UK SVOD, connected-TV advertising and online transactional video together increased their share of commercial TV and online-video revenue from 29% in 2022 to 35% in 2023.
Online transactional video is broader than digital movie rental, so the combined share cannot be relabeled as rental spending. It is best used as distribution context for the market in which rental services operate.
Ofcom reported the following connected-TV and industry totals:
| Measure | 2022 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|
| Connected-TV advertising revenue | £962 million | £1.2 billion |
| Total UK commercial TV and online-video industry revenue | £15.53 billion | £15.60 billion |
| Connected-TV advertising change | — | 21% growth |
Source: Media Nations: UK 2024. Advertising revenue and the broad industry total are comparators, not digital movie-rental measures.
The most useful reading of these statistics is therefore definitional as well as numerical. UK rental value and transaction estimates describe a specific VOD category; U.S. DEG figures add preliminary rental-only observations but often combine VOD and EST; and Ofcom’s figures show how transactional video sits alongside subscriptions and advertising.