Jeremy Clarkson’s DriveTribe Lost Millions Before Its Eventual Demise
The Grand Tour hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May’s website business collapsed after losing millions.
The trio started DriveTribe in 2015 after they left Top Gear and was even backed by Disney amongst other wealthy companies. However, the website was closed earlier this year with just Hammond carrying on with the social media side of things.
It is reported from sources close to the company that the closure of the site was due to Covid-19 causing the car industry to spend less on marketing etc. One source said:
‘It was fundamentally a website that needed money from advertising. That was the model,’
Clarkson has commented on the site closing:
‘We’re all really disappointed that challenges in the industry – not in the least helped by the ongoing pandemic – have simply made it impossible to continue with the business in its current form.
‘I’m very much looking forward to seeing what mischief Hammond and his team get up to as they take the channels and the community forward.’
It was reported in early 2021 that DriveTribe had £21 million worth of losses in its first four years of running. A spokesperson at the time put this down to including initial investments but since that news came out it wasn’t really such a shock that eventually the site could not keep going.
