Tesco wants 20% of games market by 2012

Supermarket behemoth Tesco wants to have a 20 per cent share of the UK games software market.

The firm told MCV it can achieve this goal, and become the UK’s second largest games retailer in terms of sales, over the next two years.

We have already doubled our share on software, hardware and peripherals in the last year,” said senior buying manager for games John Stanhope.

The team has also doubled in size in the last 18 months. We now have the resource to get to 20 per cent of the games software market.”

It is a far cry from where Tesco was two years ago, with suppliers dubbing them a ‘missed opportunity’ for gaming (MCV 532 10/04/2009). Entertainment category director Rob Salter moved to fix the problem, hiring Stanhope, increasing in-store space and adding to the games team.

Salter told MCV: I have been here just over two years and my first meetings with the video game suppliers were quite challenging.

They said ‘You are not really a priority for us’, which is unusual for Tesco.

So when John arrived we said that we were going to grow our share, and we then spent the next two years getting on and delivering on that promise. We have now put ourselves way up the pecking order with our suppliers. We have a long way to go, but it’s been a decent couple of years.”

Over the past 12 months Tesco has started taking game pre-orders and launched a pre-owned offer in over 60 stores.

And now the world’s third largest retailer is rolling out service desks specifically for entertainment and electronics.

Tesco at its best in entertainment should be as good as a specialist retailer,” said Stanhope.

The next step is to have service desks at the heart of the department. In the top 250 Tesco stores we have the opportunity to create a proper games and entertainment and electrical department.”