Entertainment spend grew by 13.5 per cent last month, driven by Coldplay ticket sales and streaming of Jilly Cooper's The Rivals, according to experts at Barclays. The year on year boost was largely driven by Coldplay World Tour ticket sales.
Digital content and subscriptions also grew 9.7 per cent, as streamflation – the rising price of streaming services – continued, while popular programmes such as Rivals, Heartstopper, Nobody Wants This and Agatha All Along continued to encourage Brits to spend evenings indoors. As the darker nights close in, Brits look set to stay on the sofa, for their sales shopping at least.
As retail continues to show signs of recovery, many shoppers are planning ahead for Black Friday, with 45% of Brits saying they prefer browsing Black Friday deals online (compared to 16 per cent in-store), and three in 10 already having saved items in their online cart. The Barclays Consumer Spend report combines hundreds of millions of customer transactions with consumer research to provide an in-depth view of UK spending Consumer card spending grew by 0.7 per cent year-on-year in October – less than September’s increase (1.
2 per cent) and below the latest CPIH inflation rate of 2.6 per cent. Growth was propped up by spending on non-essential items, which climbed 2.
1 per cent, driven by the strong performance of entertainment, up 13.5 per cent, and the recovery of retail, which recorded its third consecutive month of growth. In October, essential spending.