The Art Basel and UBS Global Art Market Report 2024 by Arts Economics
6 Insights from The Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2024
How have collector habits evolved in 2023 and the first half of 2024? What's the impact on art collecting of the wealth transfer between generations?
The Art Basel and UBS Survey of Global Collecting 2024 by Arts Economics reveals insights into High-net-worth individuals’ (HNWIs) attitudes and behaviors in 2023 and the first half of 2024. Authored by cultural economist Dr. Clare McAndrew of Arts Economics and conducted in collaboration with UBS, the survey examines HNWIs’ spending, event attendance, motivations for collecting, and their interactions with artists, galleries, and institutions.
This 2024 survey, the largest of its kind to date, gathered responses from over 3,660 HNWIs in 14 markets across Brazil, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mainland China, Mexico, Singapore, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Key Findings
1. Following two years of growth, sales in the art market slowed in 2023, falling by 4% year-on-year to an estimated $65 billion. Against a backdrop of high interest rates, inflation, and political instability, sales were thinner at the top end of the market, and the performance of some of the major art markets diverged. Although they were down year-on-year, values remained above the pre-pandemic 2019 level of $64.4 billion.
2. Despite the fall in value, the volume of transactions grew in 2023, increasing to 39.4 million (up by 4% on 2022), with the uplift driven by the relative buoyancy of transactions at lower price levels for both dealers and auction houses, and the pullback being mainly at the high end, where volumes tended to be lower.
3. Both public auction and dealer sales decreased in 2023, although the decline in auctions was more severe, falling by 7% versus a 3% drop in dealer sales, and saved from a deeper contraction through the injection of postponed 2022 sales in China early in the year. Private sales at auction houses went against the declining trend, increasing by 2% year-on-year.
4. The US maintained its position as the leading market worldwide, accounting for 42% of sales by value, down by 3% year-on-year. China, including Mainland China and Hong Kong, became the second-largest global art market, with its share rising to 19%, while the UK fell back to third place with a share of 17%. France remained in a stable fourth position at 7%.
5. After a robust recovery to reach a record high of $30.2 billion in 2022, the US market declined by 10% to $27.2 billion in 2023. The US remained the key center worldwide for sales of the highest-priced works of art, and while 2022 was a record year for high-end auction sales, the decline in 2023 reflected thinner trading at the top, leaving the market just below its level in 2019.
6. Sales in China rallied against the declining trend, increasing by 9% to an estimated $12.2 billion. As the economy reopened in January 2023 following strict COVID-related lockdowns in 2022, there was a surge of activity in the art market in the first half of the year, with postponed auction inventories sold to enthusiastic post-lockdown buyers, while Hong Kong’s major fairs and exhibitions returned to their full-scale programs. The second half of the year was considerably slower, with projections of weaker economic growth and a persistent real estate slump weighing on demand and indicating that some of the outperformance in 2023 may have been driven by the unique reopening context.
7. After showing much resilience to intense economic and political pressures in 2021 and 2022, sales in the UK market fell by 8% to $10.9 billion in 2023. The UK is a key hub globally and within Europe for sales of the highest-priced works, and as these thinned out and imports of art to the UK declined, the market fell to 11% below its pre-pandemic level ($12.2 billion in 2019).
8. Following a strong recovery, with sales growth of 62% over 2021 and 2022, sales in the French market fell by 7% in 2023 to $4.6 billion, although remaining just above their level in 2019. There was mixed performance in the rest of Europe, and sales in the EU fell by 2% to an estimated $8.6 billion.
9. Online sales continued to grow despite the downturn in the market, reaching an estimated $11.8 billion in 2023, a rise of 7% from 2022. Although down from a peak in 2021 of $13.3 billion, sales remained almost double the level of 2019 or any year before that, and accounted for 18% of the market’s total turnover.
10. While there were many examples of transactions at high prices in online-only sales, the tendency for the most expensive works to be predominantly sold offline remained. Data from the fine art auction sector in 2023 showed that, like offline, the vast majority (over 95%) of transactions in online-only auctions were for prices of less than $50,000. However, unlike offline sales which were heavily dominated by value in the $1 million-plus segment, 58% of the value of the online-only fine art auction market in 2023 was sales at prices of less than $50,000 and over 85% was works sold for less than
$250,000.
11. From a peak of $2.9 billion in 2021, sales of art-related NFTs on NFT platforms outside the art market have declined for two years, reaching $1.2 billion in 2023, down by 51% year-on-year but still over 60 times the size of the market in 2020 ($20 million). After outperforming art in 2022 to peak at almost $18 billion, the collectibles segment also saw a large fall in sales in 2023 to $6.3 billion, down by 64% year-on-year, with much of the purely speculative activity which has dominated these platforms losing momentum. Collectibles still made up the dominant share of sales by value, accounting for 84% of these two segments versus 16% for art-related NFTs.
Outlook of the Art Trade in 2024
Although 2023 was a challenging year for growth in the art market, at the end of the year and looking forward to 2024, most of the businesses operating in it were optimistic for at least a stable year ahead, although optimism was not as strong as in previous years. In the dealer sector, when asked about the year to come in 2024: 36% of dealers expected an improvement in sales, down from 45% when asked at the end of 2022 (and 62% at the end of 2021) / 48% expected sales to be about the same as in 2023 (up by 9%) / 16% expected sales to decrease, stable on 2022 but up from 11% when surveyed at the end of 2021.
Like previous findings, dealers tended to be somewhat more optimistic about their own sales versus those by peer galleries, likely due to feeling greater control over the outcomes. The majority forecast that most of their global peers of similar size would see a stable year. Only 23% predicted these peers would see a rise in sales (down by 4% year-on-year), although this excluded almost a quarter of the sample who said they did not know how they would fare. The share expecting a rise for other dealers in their country or region dropped from 33% to 26%, although in both cases, only a minority thought 2024 would be a worse year for others in the sector.
While at the end of 2022 it was the smallest dealers with less than $250,000 in annual turnover that were the most optimistic about sales, at the end of 2023, the largest dealers were more hopeful for a better year, with just over half (54%) expecting an increase. There was slightly less optimism in the middle market, with only around a third of dealers expecting higher sales in 2024, but even here, only a minority thought sales would decline, and the fall in optimism versus reports from the previous year was largely due to more dealers thinking their sales would remain stable.
Dealers in most regions were mainly hopeful of a stable year ahead, with the highest levels of optimism from South America, including 87% of Brazilian dealers who thought their sales would increase, also among the most optimistic regions in 2022 (when 67% of South American dealers predicted an uptick). Dealers in the US also had a high share (44%) expecting more sales in 2024 and only a minority of 11% thought they would fall. In both the UK and the EU, around one third thought sales would rise, a little higher than dealers in Asia, whose expectations were more moderate, although still only a minority expected their businesses to see a decline this year. While only 14% of dealers in China thought sales would fall in 2024, there was a higher-than-average proportion of pessimism in other markets, including in Japan, where 27% of dealers predicted a drop in sales, and only 22% thought they might increase.
Further Reading
(1) After 18 Years of Number-Crunching, TEFAF Has Discontinued Its Signature Art Market Report
"The art fair will no longer attempt to quantify the value of the global art market."
Since 2002 the TEFAF has been involved in providing a program of independent research into the art market. TEFAF’s Art Market Report provides an opportunity to shine a light onto an area of the market that is under-researched or in the process of change. The art market report released during TEFAF Maastricht has become an industry standard.
(2) The artnet Intelligence Report
(3) The Artsy Art Fair Report 2024