It's US$250M-ish for 36 episodes, so it isn't quite comparable to a single season of Game of Thrones or House of Cards. But your point is well taken: this has to be as successful as some of the recent wildly successful shows or it'll be a net loss.
Hmmm. Yeah, 3 seasons does change the equation. That still means, though, that they're looking at Game Of Thrones money for a variety show about cars. To be successful it has to convert $80m worth of people to Prime. At $100 per year, that basically means they need Clarkson et. al. to add a million prime subscribers. At best-guess 40m Prime subscribers that's a 3% uptick or so. I dunno. They might get that, but I doubt it. Amazon straight-up doesn't understand streaming or else they wouldn't try so hard to make me watch Mozart in the Jungle on a fricking fire stick.
Let's not get carried away. It's BBC America popular. Yeah it's popular in the UK but as a market, the UK is California, Oregon and Washington. Amongst the kiddies, John Oliver is "immensely popular." I don't see anyone throwing $244m at John Oliver. And remember - that's the above the line cost. That's salary. You still have to build a show. Dr. Who is "immensely popular." Dr. Who at $244m is batshit insane.
Top Gear has a weekly audience of 350 million viewers (it's in the Guiness Book of Records as most-watched factual show) and has made $225m in revenue for the BBC. Most of that comes from selling it to the 200+ countries it's broadcast in, but still, there's money to be made here.
Hmmm. You're right. Those are big numbers. That said, the MASH finale had 121m viewers, beating out "Who Shot JR" and the Superbowl... but AfterMash lasted 31 episodes and finished Season 1 tenth overall. It's a stupid amount of money for a media company that barely knows how to sell things to Americans, let alone a worldwide market. They have zero variety programming. And this is just the above-the-line charge - they still have to build a show. NBC's The Voice opened with $750k in above-the-line charges per episode. Hell's Kitchen pays $350k. Whatever this new Top Gear Thing is gonna be, they're paying $8m before they shoot a frame of footage. And I'll admit it - I hate fucking Jeremy Clarkson. One Simon Cowell is enough, thanks.
The example I'll offer is derivative bands. I've seen a band play a sold out 1000 capacity venue, but when a band with one of the members returned to town two months later, they couldn't sell 50 tickets. Hardcore fans will follow, but the real money is in the casual fans. Top Gear put up huge numbers, but it's going to take a great effort by Amazon to carry that over to a new show. As others noted here, the editing and production on Top Gear was excellent. I enjoy Top Gear as an entire show. Would I enjoy a show that with the same presenters but a lower production quality? Would I pay for an Amazon Prime account to watch it? No, probably not.That said, the MASH finale had 121m viewers, beating out "Who Shot JR" and the Superbowl... but AfterMash lasted 31 episodes and finished Season 1 tenth overall.
I agree with you, it is unbelievably popular worldwide, but It makes me wonder what the expansion plans are like for Prime.
It's gonna be a tough game for Amazon. They're trying to launch here too, but we already have multiple huge online webstores in the Netherlands: Bol.com is our Amazon and Coolblue is like Newegg. The Netherlands is small enough that almost all orders are one-day delivery even when you order at 11pm, and they're experimenting with same-day delivery already. Why the hell would I pay for 'fast' shipping from a store that has far less to offer than those?