When Amazon Prime took on The Grand Tour, they were hopping for a major increase and boost to subscriptions, and they have. Amazon Prime currently has 63 million subscribers and 19 million of them, have joined since last June.
So the Grand Tour has given its effect, and their strategy was correct in increasing subscription base, but The GT has also effected something else, and that is illegal downloading or differently put Piracy. Yes, The GT has become the most illegally downloaded television show in History, beating the likes of Game of Thrones, Westworld, and The Walking Dead. The data analysis say that the first episode was illegally downloaded 7.9 million times, the second 6.4 million times, and the third 4.6 million times and surprisingly, the British audience makes up the largest percentage of illegal downloads (13.7%).
This of course translates into a major loss of revenue for Amazon Prime. They have lost £3.2 million in revenue with the first episode alone, only from the illegal downloads in Britain. A spokesperson for Amazon said: “The Grand Tour has become the biggest show premiere ever on Amazon Prime Video, breaking records around the world.” This is certainly bad news for Amazon as they’re trying to compete with Netflix and other companies, the $AMZN stock had a major increase during the release of The Grand Tour, but after the news and the illegal downloads, the stock tanked with more than $125/share, and Amazon failed to beat its last quarter earnings for this year, but anyway, with the last quarterly earnings gone, $AMZN stock has rebounded quite nicely and is looking good so far. Amazon has to come up with another strategy if they want to compete with Netflix, as The Grand Tour by itself won’t be enough.