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Viewing report
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UK Leisure and Recreation Market Review 2001
Key Note Publications Ltd, Jan 2001
Leisure IN TheUK Economy
According to government figures, consumer spending on leisure goods and services accounted for 27% of all consumer expenditure in 2000. Since 1996, this proportion has steadily increased from 25.7%. However, growth was slower in 2000 than in recent years.
A Complex AND Segmented Market
Unlike the basic items of consumer spending - food, housing, clothing and transport - the leisure sector lacks any homogeneity, having a mixture of goods and services, as well as in-home and `going out' activities, with a spectrum running from the entirely passive (e.g. watching TV) to the highly active and involved (e.g. team sports).
No single area of expenditure accounted for more than a quarter of spending in 2001.
The trends for each sector are summarised below, but they usually depend on the behaviour and attitudes of specific demographic groups. Listening to the radio, eating out, playing the National Lottery, or going for long walks are among the must universally popular ways of spending `leisure money' (or time). However, other activities - such as going to the cinema, betting in bookmakers, playing video games, taking hotel breaks or gardening - are all biased in one way or the other, whether it is by age, education, income or even region of the UK.
Trends IN UK Leisure
Eating Out
Eating out is more popular than ever, driven forward by high employment levels, the rising numbers of dual-income households, and the immense variety of restaurants of all types, ranging from steak houses and Asian restaurants, to fast-food chains and pizza outlets. The dominance of independent restaurant owners - branded chains are the exception in this market - has done nothing to hold back market growth.
Public Houses
Allied to the eating out market, public houses are surviving as a concept by adapting to younger drinkers, to the demands of the more affluent (bar prices have risen fast), and by serving more meals and providing entertainment as an alternative to the traditional, male-dominated `session drinking'. `New blood' has flooded into the industry as brewers have diversified, leaving much of the market to innovative `pub companies'.
DIY and Gardening
Regarding in-home leisure, it is DIY and gardening that represent the largest chunk of consumer spending. Householders are increasingly likely to eat a number of their meals outside the home, and are ready to enjoy their time at home, but the DIY and gardening hobbies also represent investment in properties. (House prices have been rising for many years, and continue to climb in 2001.) A comfortable, attractive home and garden is increasingly the venue for bringing friends and relatives together, rather than the traditional pub or restaurant gathering.
In-Home Entertainment
The media are fragmented, with consumer spending spread across reading (books, newspapers and magazines), viewing (TVs, channel subscriptions and videos) and listening (recordings and radio). The multichannel digital era is taking its time to become a mass market. Meanwhile, home computing (the Internet and playing video games) has become an absorbent activity for much of people's leisure time at home.
Cinema and Theatre
For entertainment outside the home, cinemas and theatres are important but their audiences are biased to certain population segments: teenagers and young adults for cinemas, and affluent professionals (plus foreign tourists) for theatres.
Gambling
Gambling is a crucial leisure market for several reasons including its role as a social hub for many people, whether it be syndicates for the National Lottery or the football pools, or joining bingo clubs or casinos. Moreover, the National Lottery is significant because it has helped to fund many leisure-related projects since its inception in 1994, including many tourist attractions.
Sporting Activities
Gambling is also closely related to the development of sporting activities. Apart from the Lottery, the most lucrative attraction in gambling is betting on horse or greyhound races, or on football matches. Football dominates spectator sport to an increasing extent (both live and on TV), but in sports participation, the trend away from organised team sports continues, with more and more people preferring to keep fit individually by joining a health club or using a public gym or swimming pool. In commercial terms, golf is by far the most important leisure pastime of a sporting nature.
Beyond 2001: AN Uncertain Future
Tourism, although not covered in this Review, is the market most immediately affected by the events witnessed during 2001. The year has been dominated by the terrorist attacks on the US, but these events cannot entirely overshadow the foot and mouth epidemic earlier in the year, the severe flooding of 2000, and the railway accidents that have shaken consumer confidence in the railway network.
As a result of these extraordinary events, both city centres and the countryside are seen to possess a new vulnerability, and public transport - both flying and rail travel - also has an uncertain immediate future. The eventual outcomes, in terms of leisure markets, could well include less of an inclination to travel far from home, and a renewed tendency towards `cocooning' within the home, taking advantage of the leisure opportunities being provided by new digital technologies (e.g. DVD `home cinema', surfing the Internet and video games).
Conversely, consumers continue to resist modernisation in that multichannel TV and other new technologies have had a lukewarm reception. For the next few years, in which Key Note predicts slower leisure spending growth, there will continue to be a balance between the modern leisure attractions and the simple, traditional activities, e.g. spending time with the family, taking long walks and drinking in traditional pubs.
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