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Amazon’s “Grand Tour” is a huge success - for pirates

by on12 December 2016


Clarkson is now most pirated Mercedes driver in history 

The Amazon reboot of the BBC's hit show Top Gear has been a huge hit and won the bookseller millions of views and attracted the attention of pirates.

But it has also been a hit with pirates who, instead of paying the annual $100 fee for Amazon Prime, have downloaded the first three episodes faster than Jeremy Clarkson escaping the Argendian authorities with Falkland’s themed number plates.

According to beancounters at Muso, pirates illegally downloaded the first episode 9.7 million times, the second episode 6.4 million times and the third 4.6 million times.

Most of the downloads (13.7 percent of the total) were British pirates who were as keen as ever to show foreigners how it is done. Amazon lost £3.2 million on the first episode alone making it the most illegally downloaded programme ever.

Chris Elkins, Muso chief commercial officer, said that it had overtaken every big show, including Game of Thrones and no one nice had taken their top off or lost their head.

Amazon saw its subscriber base grow by more than 19 million this year -- to a total of 63 million worldwide -- only two million of those people live in the UK.

In other words, five times as many people stole the first episode than paid for it. This must be a little worrisome for Amazon which bought the show for $160 million to boost its British subscriber base. Still the show is doing better than many thought it would.

Still old gags about foreigners, told by middle aged men in skinny jeans who just might punch you, are popular in a post-brexit, Donald Trump world, until the people who think they are funny eventually die off.

Last modified on 12 December 2016
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