Clarkson’s site for petrolheads goes crash
FORMER Top Gear hosts Jeremy Clarkson, James May and Richard Hammond made a fortune from TV shows, but their website business has hit the wall after losing millions.
DriveTribe, the online forum for car enthusiasts which the trio founded soon after leaving the hit BBC show in 2015, had attracted wealthy backers such as Disney and media executive Elisabeth Murdoch.
But it closed earlier this year after investors refused to plough further cash into the project, which included the production of videos and articles from Clarkson, May and Hammond. Hammond, who narrowly escaped death in 2006 when he crashed at 319mph while filming a stunt in a jet-powered car for Top Gear, has continued to run the brand on social-media channels.
Sources close to the company said the Covid pandemic meant that the car industry had less to spend on marketing, causing income to dry up for DriveTribe. ‘It was fundamentally a website that needed money from advertising. That was the model,’ said one.
Commenting on the decision to close the website, Clarkson, 61, said: ‘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.’
In January last year The Mail on Sunday reported that the DriveTribe venture had racked up staggering losses of £21 million in the four years since its launch. At the time, a spokesman for Digital Tribe Holdings said the figure was so high because it included investment.
After quitting Top Gear, the trio went on to launch a successful rival motoring programme, The Grand Tour, after signing a multi-millionpound deal with Amazon.