Gaming Is Bigger Than Movies and Music Combined - Here's What That Means for Brands Entering the West
The numbers get repeated so often they've started to lose their shock value: gaming is bigger than movies and music. But when Western marketing budgets are still built around the old entertainment hierarchy - film first, music second, games somewhere in the "youth culture" bucket - it's worth putting the actual figures on the table. For studios and brands looking to break into North America and Europe, understanding the scale of this shift isn't optional. It's the whole business case.
The Revenue Gap Isn't Close
Global gaming revenue landed at roughly $188.8 billion in 2025, and depending on how broadly you define the "gaming ecosystem" (hardware, subscriptions, esports, streaming), some estimates put the figure well over $300 billion. Compare that to the global film box office, which came in around $30 billion in 2024, and the global music industry at roughly $31 billion. Add them together and gaming still comes out roughly three times larger - and that's before counting the adjacent economies gaming has built that film and music simply don't have: livestreaming, esports betting, in-game cosmetics, and creator monetization.
PwC's own forecasting has the video game industry growing from about $224 billion in 2024 to nearly $300 billion by 2029, a trajectory that will keep outpacing cinema and music combined for the rest of the decade.
In the U.S. specifically, consumers spent $60.7 billion on video games in 2025 - the second-highest total on record.
Gaming's Audience Doesn't Look Like the Stereotype Anymore
This is the part that catches most Western marketing teams off guard: the "gamer" they're picturing hasn't existed for years.
- The average U.S. gamer is 36 years old. This is not a teenage hobby. It's a mainstream adult pastime that spans generations.
- 205.1 million Americans aged 5 to 90 play video games regularly - that's more than three in five people in the entire country.
- 60% of U.S. adults 18+ play weekly, and nearly half of Baby Boomers (ages 61-79) play weekly too.
- Women make up 45–47% of the U.S. gaming population - essentially gender parity, not the male-dominated niche brands still often assume.
- Globally, 3.5+ billion people play games - over 42% of the entire world's population touches a game regularly.
For any brand trying to reach Western consumers, this is the single largest, most demographically diverse entertainment audience available. It's not a niche channel anymore. It's closer to the mainstream media environment itself.
Attention, Not Just Revenue, Is the Real Story
Revenue numbers tell only half the story. The deeper shift is in how gaming captures time and attention compared to passive media.
A film runs two hours. A song runs three minutes. A game runs indefinitely - players return to it daily, socialize inside it, spend inside it, and often stay loyal to it for years. Weekly global playtime now averages 8.45 hours per player, with the 18-29 cohort logging nearly 11 hours a week. Esports alone pulled in 640.8 million viewers globally in 2025, and the League of Legends World Championship final peaked at 6.75 million concurrent viewers - numbers that rival major traditional sports broadcasts.
This is why gaming isn't just outspending film and music - it's out-competing them for the one resource every brand is actually fighting over: sustained human attention.
What This Means for Studios and Brands Entering the West
For Asian gaming and entertainment brands looking at Western expansion, these numbers aren't just impressive - they're the argument for why culturalization, not simple localization, matters so much. You're not entering a small, easily-won category. You're entering the largest entertainment market in the world, one with its own celebrity ecosystem (streamers, esports pros, content creators), its own platform politics (Steam, Twitch, Discord, YouTube), and an audience that expects brands to understand its culture, not just translate into its language.
The scale is the opportunity. The complexity is why it takes more than a straight port to win it.
Sources: Newzoo Global Games Market Report 2025, PwC Global Entertainment & Media Outlook 2025–29, Entertainment Software Association (ESA) 2025 Essential Facts, Statista.
Theorycraft helps Asian gaming and entertainment brands break into Western markets through culturalized creative, paid media, and strategic partnerships. Want to talk about your Western expansion strategy? [Get in touch.]
