Grand Tour is most pirated TV show in history, surpasses Game Of Thrones and Walking Dead

Former Top Gear trio of Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May have proved that their fans do not care much about the platform they have chosen as their new show Grand Tour running on Amazon Video has become the most pirated show in television history.

The new motoring show, which is now the most illegally downloaded television programme, surpassed download figures of HBO's Game Of Thrones and AMC's The Walking Dead, two of the most popular shows on television among torrenters.

According to anti-piracy technology company Muso, data analysis of the piracy market showed that users illicitly downloaded the first episode of the Grand Tour 7.9 million times, the second episode 6.4 million times and the third 4.6 million times. A majority of these downloads (13.7%) were from users in Britain.

As only 2 million of Amazon's total 63 million subscribers live in the UK, it means that nearly five times as many people pirated the first episode rather than watch it on Amazon Video.

Muso also calculated that Amazon could have lost up to £3.2m ($4m) in revenue for its first episode in Britain alone due to the illegal downloads.

"It is the most illegally downloaded programme ever. It is off the scale in terms of volume," said chief commercial officer at Muso, Chris Elkins.

Grand Tour debuted on 18 November and Amazon said that it was the biggest premiere ever on Amazon Prime Video, breaking records around the world.

Clarkson, who is a household name in the motoring world since the 90s due to BBC's Top Gear, was sacked by the network in March 2015 for an "unprovoked physical and verbal attack" on a show producer that involved racist comments.