The Grand Tour is the most illegally downloaded show ever

7 years, 11 months ago - 13 December 2016, Autoblog
The Grand Tour  episode 4
The Grand Tour episode 4
In its glory days, Top Gear was a big name in the world of illegal downloading.

Now, Jeremy Clarkson, James May, and Richard Hammond's follow up effort is enjoying (?) the same popularity – it's officially the most illegally downloaded show in history. The Grand Tour is bigger than Game of Thrones, bigger than House of Cards, and bigger than the star of 2016's new lineup, Westworld.

That's according to data from industry analyst Muso and originally printed by the Daily Mail. Pirates downloaded episode one of the new show, which saw the team's long-awaited comparison of the Ferrari LaFerrari, McLaren P1, and Porsche 918 Spyder, 7.9 million times. The thieves snagged the lackluster second episode 6.4 million times, while the generally solid third episode was downloaded 4.6 million times.

"It is the most illegally downloaded program ever. It is off the scale in terms of volume," Muso CCO Chris Elkins told the Mail. "It has overtaken every big show, including Game of Thrones, for the totals across different platforms."

So, what's all this piracy costing Amazon? A lot. The Mail reports that Amazon has lost £3.2 million ($4.1 million, at today's rates) in revenue from UK-based downloads – British pirates account for the largest percentage of total downloads, at 13.7 percent. If such a relatively small percentage of pirates is costing Amazon £3.2 million, the company must be losing a serious amount of cash around the globe.