You’ve got twenty quid burning a hole in your pocket this weekend. Where’s it actually going to stretch furthest?
Not the theoretical answer. Not the marketing answer. The real answer, backed by what people actually spend and how long things genuinely last.
Let’s break down four options and see where your money goes furthest – because the results might surprise you.
The Cinema: Premium Experience, Premium Price
Here’s what £20 gets you at the cinema these days.
Average UK ticket price in 2024 sits at £7.73. Throw in popcorn and a drink – that combo’s running you another £6 to £7. You’re looking at roughly £14 total for a two-hour film.
That works out to £7 per hour of entertainment.
Now, there’s something special about cinema. The massive screen. The sound system that makes your chest vibrate during action scenes. Nobody pausing halfway through to check their phone (well, most people aren’t doing that).
But here’s the thing – Brits are voting with their wallets, and cinema’s losing. UK had 126.5 million cinema admissions in 2024. Sounds like a lot until you realize that’s less than 2 visits per person for the entire year. Pre-pandemic? We were hitting 177 million admissions.
Half of people surveyed say cinema tickets are too expensive. It’s the number one reason they don’t go more often.
The brutal truth? Your £20 cinema trip is over in 2-3 hours, and that’s it. Can’t rewind the good bits. Can’t watch it again tomorrow. One and done.
Streaming: The Boring Winner Nobody Wants to Admit
Right, let’s talk streaming. Because the math here is almost embarrassing.
Netflix Standard costs £10.99 a month. Disney+ is £9.99. Amazon Prime Video runs £8.99 (or £5.99 standalone). Average UK household watches about 30 hours of streaming per month.
Do that calculation: £10.99 ÷ 30 hours = 37p per hour.
Streaming wins on pure value. Not even close. It’s like comparing a Tesco meal deal to a Michelin star restaurant – completely different price brackets.
But here’s where it gets interesting. Nearly 70% of UK households have at least one streaming subscription. Almost half have two or more. Average household spends £25-50 monthly on streaming services.
And nearly half of those households are paying for subscriptions they don’t even use.
Brits waste £1.6 billion every year on forgotten subscriptions. That’s not a typo. £14 per month on average for streaming services people signed up for and never cancelled. Some 19% of people don’t even realize they’re still paying.
You know what’s cheaper than streaming? Not paying for streaming you forgot about.
The Pub: Where Your Money Evaporates Faster Than Guinness Settles
The average UK pint costs £5.17 in 2024. Walk into a London Wetherspoons and you’re looking at closer to £7.
Three pints and a bag of crisps? You’ve just spent £17-18 for about three hours down the local. That’s roughly £6 per hour.
But nobody actually spends £17 on a pub night, do they?
Research shows the average UK night out costs £70.69 when you factor in transport, entry fees (if you’re going to a club), food, and drinks. Pub spending hit £344 per person in 2024 – and that’s just the average across the entire year.
Plot twist: 41% of Brits are cutting back on pub visits to save money. The real behavior that’s not in those official statistics? People are pre-drinking at home first, then heading to the pub already half-cut to avoid spending a fortune.
The pub’s got one thing cinema and streaming can’t touch, though – it’s social. You’re not just buying drinks. You’re buying the banter, the atmosphere, the “remember that time when…” stories.
Whether that’s worth six quid an hour is between you and your wallet.
Casino Gaming: Where House Edge Literally Determines Your Cost-Per-Hour
This is where things get mathematical – but stick with me, because it actually matters.
When you gamble, the house edge is basically your entertainment fee. It’s how much the casino expects to keep from your money over time.
Let’s say you walk into an online casino with £20. Where you spend it determines how long your money lasts.
- Baccarat (specifically the banker bet) has a 1.06% house edge. That means for every £20 you bet, the casino expects to keep about 21p. Sites like sportbet.one offer baccarat with exactly this edge on banker bets – among the lowest you’ll find in casino gaming. If you’re betting £2-3 per hand and taking your time, that £20 can stretch 4-6 hours.
Cost per hour? Somewhere between £3.33 to £5.
- Blackjack with basic strategy sits around 0.5% house edge – even better if you know what you’re doing.
- Roulette (European, not American) carries a 2.7% house edge. Your money won’t last as long, but it’s still reasonable.
Now here’s where it goes sideways.
- Slots typically run 5-8% house edge. Some go higher. That means for every £20, you’re expected to lose £1 to £1.60. And here’s the kicker – slots are fast. The average UK slots session lasts just 17 minutes. Only 6% of sessions go longer than an hour.
Put £20 in a slot machine and you’re looking at maybe 20-30 minutes of entertainment. That’s £40-60 per hour.
Your £20 literally lasts 54 times longer on streaming than it does on slots.
UK online casino data shows £3.6 billion gets pumped into slots alone each year (by the following year (April 2024 – March 2025), that figure has grown even further), RCBB accrued £6.9 billion GGY which can be broken down into 3 individual areas. Some 35% of online casino players are wagering over £100 monthly. Ten percent are spending more than £500.
The house always wins – but how fast they win depends entirely on which game you’re playing.
The Reality Check
When it comes to pure entertainment value per pound, streaming is in a league of its own – there really is no contest. But that is not the complete picture. You do not measure a night out at the pub the same way that you measure a night in watching Netflix. One of them is about going out with people, while the other is about staying in and avoiding people.
Finally going to the cinema is a luxury that not a lot of people do anymore especially with the sky high prices. But for those big blockbuster hits that deserve to be watched in the cinema, it is a must.
When it comes to value per hour, casino gaming can actually be decent if you stick to the low house-edge games and avoid the fickle loss chasing. But the moment you hit the slots or start doubling down when you are getting behind, your £20 is about to disappear in a flash.
The real lesson is that we are all probably overspending. Close to 50% of UK households are paying for streaming services that they don’t even use. People are happy to complain that they cannot afford things while spending £344 a year on pub trips. The prices of cinema tickets have skyrocketed when in comparison to the price of Netflix. £14 for a couple hours as opposed to £11 for an entire month of Netflix is an obvious no brainer.
There are a ton of different ways to spend £20 and get various amounts of enjoyment. Figure out where you want to get it to get the best bang for your buck! The amount of money doesn’t determine the total enjoyment you could get. It really just comes down to how you want to spend your money.
If you are going to spend money, it might be a good idea to check your bank account statement first and cancel subscriptions you might have forgotten about a while ago.
