Saudi Arabia leads GCC digital entertainment sector; video game market surged to $1.7b in 2022
Mobile phone games ranked the first in profitability among video games
Cairo: Saudi Arabia is leading the digital entertainment sector among the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, securing around 58% of the revenues in 2022, according to an official report.
The kingdom gained about $2.1 billion from the Gulf region’s overall revenues of $3.7 billion in 2022, according to the report from the Saudi Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.
Particularly significant is the growth of the video game sector in the kingdom where revenues from the video game market surged to $1.75 billion, Saudi news portal Sabq quoted the report.
Mobile phone games ranked the first in profitability among video games, accounting for around 80% of the total revenues of the video game sector in 2022.
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The report noted a dramatic rise in numbers of video entertainment users in the kingdom over recent years. The number of video-on-demand platform (VOD) users reached 12.9 million in 2022 against 9.5 million in 2017. VOD refers to a technology for delivering video content including films and television shows directly to customers upon demand.
The kingdom is seeking to promote digital transformation and support emerging technologies with an emphasis on boosting competitiveness in adopting digital transformation technologies. The size of the Saudi communications and IT market reached about $42 billion in 2022, according to official figures.
The GCC comprises Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar.
In July, the 2024 Esports World Cup (EWC), a global multi-game tournament, was held in Riyadh. The event, which ended on August 25, saw the participation of hundreds of competitors, who vied for a record-breaking $60m prize pool.