Household Expenditure on Digital Services 2020

Statistician's Comment

Commenting on the data, Patrick Quill, Senior Statistician, said: "This publication presents new estimates by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) of household consumption of digitally provided services. The estimates are based on data from administrative sources as well as from publicly available information. The analysis includes estimates of spending by households on streaming, gaming, audiobooks, podcasts, social media, app stores, data storage services, education and wellbeing, and other online services. The costs of access to broadband and television are not included. 

The CSO estimates that Irish households spent €896 million on digital services in 2020, of which €138m was to Irish resident companies supplying these services. The UK provided more digital services to Irish households than any other country at 34% of the total spend, followed by Ireland at 15% and The Netherlands at 13%. See Table 1. 

Video streaming at €211m or 24% of the total spend, was the largest category of paid for digital services. The next highest categories of spending were on online gaming and online gambling, both at 15% of the total spend. See Figure 1.

In 2020, Irish households spent €49 million on social media and dating sites, €25 million on publishing, audiobooks and podcasts, and €21 million on online services of education, wellbeing and hobbies in 2020. These amounts add up to 11% of the total spend on digital services.

International comparisons are not readily available. However cross-border spending of €758 million on digital services by Irish households compares with an estimate of €7.4 billion cross-border digital purchases by German households in 2019."

Editor's Note

Part of these results are included in the balance of payments cross-border service estimates. Although national statistics offices worldwide have found it challenging to compile statistics on the digital economy, it is necessary for the completeness of the balance of payments to make estimates where survey data may not yet be available. In researching cross-border flows of digital services, the CSO also found data on domestically provided services. The full results are presented here within the CSO’s Frontier Series publication scheme for new sources and methods, to give a complete picture of household consumption of digital and electronic services, while acknowledging that some of the estimates are not arrived at through traditional approaches, such as surveys or the use of administrative data.

Tables and Graphs