The debut show of The Grand Tour – the new series by the former Top Gear trio of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May – has just been crowned the most illegally downloaded program in TV history.
The show, made by Amazon and aired on its Amazon Prime channel, debuted globally on the 18th of November. However, the UK’s The Daily Mail is reporting that the first episode has been illegally downloaded 7.9 million times. Episode two got stolen 6.4 million times, and the third episode is 4.6 million.
And apparently it’s not that hard to see the show for free. Pirates simply record the episodes, post them to a website which enables viewers to bypass Amazon’s subscription fees.
The series reportedly cost Amazon $A270 million to make while the show’s star, Jeremy Clarkson, was paid $A17 million for his appearance alone.
Commenting on the rather brazen thefts, Amazon’s chief commercial officer, Chris Elkins, told The Daily Mail: “It is the most illegally downloaded programme ever. It is off the scale in terms of volume.
“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,” he said.
