Amazon Prime paid a fuck load for The Grand Tour… and then I paid for it again when I watched it.
Jeremy Clarkson and his mates went to the highest bidder, which happened to be Amazon, who paid a whopping $250 million (£200 million) for the series.
Netflix boss Ted Sarandos revealed why Netflix didn’t outbid for Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, and James May’s new motoring show.
The number of Prime subscribers is soaring but will it be enough for the £4.5 million they’re paying per episode?
It was previously reported that they paid £160 million, but Sarandos confirmed that was an ‘under-reported number’.
Sarandos said:
We knew what it was worth.
We made a play for that show, definitely, but we’ve had every season of Top Gear on Netflix in most territories in the world, so we had a better sense than most of what the audience was for Top Gear on our platform.
Much to my surprise, The Grand Tour has received excellent reviews across the board, labelled as ‘Top Gear with a bigger budget’.
Just for reference, Top Gear had a budget of about £500,000 per show.
The second episode is available on Amazon Prime this Friday if you’re struggling with insomnia.
