Amazon’s The Grand Tour, starring Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May, was the most viewed title November and December 2016 in the UK.

GfK’s SVOD content tracking and analysis reveals that it attracted the biggest audience reach for an Amazon show in the UK since GfK’s tracking service began in 2015.

The Grand Tour accounted for 8% of all the streams watched in November. The following month, that increased to 17%, well ahead of the second placed title, The Man in the High Castle, which attracted 9%.

According to GfK, the second most popular reason given for sign up in December, was ‘to watch exclusive content not available elsewhere’. Added to that, over half of those who said that they signed up to Amazon in order to watch a particular show, said it was TGT that they wanted to watch.

As well as tracking daily viewing of all titles watched, GfK’s study asks additional questions about the content that users choose to watch. When asked why they started watching TGT, a clear majority of viewers (68%) said that they were fans of the BBC’s previous version of the show, and just over half (52%) claimed that they are fans of the presenters. This underlines the continuing value of linear TV to these platforms, not just in providing entire series to fill the content of their libraries, but also in establishing the talent that SVOD platforms need, to attract new audiences.

Given the reported differences in programme budget, did viewers perceive a difference in quality between TGT and its linear predecessor? Do they think TGT is better than the original?

Amongst those that watched TGT, over half (55%) said the show is ‘much/slightly better’ than the original Top Gear, with 45% claiming that TGT exceeded their original expectations. This is backed up with the show’s content rating of 8.6, measured by GfK’s SVOD tracking using a 10 point scale. This score is higher than most other big Amazon originals such as Bosch (8.5), The Man in the High Castle (8.3), and Transparent (8.2), and compares well against the average content rating for any show watched on Amazon, which currently stands at 7.9.

“Our analysis proves that the high production costs for TGT are paying off, with viewers of the show agreeing that Amazon’s investment has been worth it,” commented Christopher Smith, senior research executive in GfK’s brand and customer research division.

“GfK’s tracking is unique as we are able to reveal what is being watched at title level, and this provides excellent insight of the return on investment that Amazon are gaining from their content acquisitions and commissions.”