The Grand Tour is settings plenty of records, and not all of them as desirable as far as their production team is concerned, but a record is a record. The Grand Tour has now become the most illegally downloaded show… … … in the world. According to data from Muso, the first episode of the new series was downloaded a staggering 7.9 million times. The UK was responsible for the largest percentage of the downloads too, making up 13.7% of that total.
While I do argue that downloads to not equal lost earnings, as the people who downloaded it clearly weren’t going to pay up for it at that time anyway, less downloads do not always mean more paid viewers. However, Amazon could have lost/made around £3.2m in revenue just on the first episode download rates, which shows just how right Amazon was to back the iconic trio. Love them or hate them, the guys get in the viewers, both legally and illegally, there’s a huge fanbase there.
“It is the most illegally downloaded programme ever. It is off the scale in terms of volume,” Chris Elkins, the chief commercial officer at the company, said. “It has overtaken every big show, including Game Of Thrones, for the totals across different platforms. We monitor thousands of campaigns and this one really stands out.”
Amazon Prime is priced at £79 a year, and includes over 200 countries, and had 19 million new subscribers last year alone. There’s no doubt it is raking in a lot of viewers for the new show. This is a good thing, as they forked out £130 million on a three series deal with Clarkson, May and Hammond!
So, you totally paid to watch it, right?
