UK games industry received £7.7bn investment in five years

Ukie, the industry body for games companies, analysed 39 acquisitions, expansions and IPOs that publicly declared a monetary value, adjusted for inflation, in an effort to determine the scale of investment into the sector.

It estimates these deals covered £7.7bn between January 2017 and June 2022, of which £6.87bn was the result of inward investment from non-UK companies based in 13 different countries acquiring UK studios. This figure represents 89 per cent of the value of all disclosed acquisitions made in the UK over the last five years.

The top three inward acquisitions accounted for 41 per cent of investment into the UK games industry captured by the research over the period.

Additionally, eight of the 10 most valuable investments into the UK industry have occurred since December 2020 – with three of the most valuable deals occurring in that month alone.

UK businesses spent £141m in the period acquiring games businesses in the UK itself – accounting for 2 per cent of overall investment.

This figure, however, was exceeded by the amount UK games businesses spent expanding overseas with companies investing upwards of £180m to support their international expansions.

However, the overall total of investment into the UK games industry is likely to be higher than Ukie's estimated total. Overall, there were 87 acquisitions, expansions and IPOs across the time period analysing – meaning that the value of 48 deals were not available for the research.

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