The online retail giant has reportedly paid US$250m to sign presenters Jeremy Clarkson, James May, Richard Hammond and their long-term production partner Andy Wilman for a new three-season motoring show that will debut early next year.

“I feel like I’ve climbed out of a biplane and into a spaceship,” said Clarkson with characteristic bluster.

Much has been made of the creative freedom Amazon and Netflix have handed the talent they choose to work with. Whether this extends to the kind of physical assault on a producer that got Clarkson fired from the BBC remains to be seen. This aside, the significance of this deal is acute.

Netflix is said to have paid US$100m for two 13-episode seasons of House of Cards when it started out in the original drama series business little more than two years ago. If the Financial Times’ US$250m claim is correct, then Amazon has eclipsed this with its 36-episode dive into factual entertainment.

The figure is also far more than the BBC would ever have been able to pay the Top Gear stars. It wanted to keep May and Hammond but cannot compete at such prices. BBC director of television Danny Cohen told the FT in December that the big beasts of online video were already making life difficult for the UK public broadcaster.

“There’s been a recent example where Netflix was able to blow us out of the water in terms of a deal,” he told the newspaper. The sums offered by the US streamer, Cohen said, were five times what the BBC could offer.

Top Gear is estimated to bring in around £50m (US$79m) annually for the BBC’s commercial arm and while the show’s success has largely been attributed to Wilman and Clarkson’s relaunch of the format in 2002, BBC’s scheduling, licensing, marketing, magazines, YouTube presence and iPlayer availability have all been integral.

Quite whether Amazon, Clarkson et al can repeat this and achieve the 350 million viewers the show is said to attract worldwide remains to be seen (the same will be true of the BBC’s reboot with new presenter Chris Evans). Since the online retailer, like Netflix, doesn’t release viewer numbers, we’ll likely never know.

But then such digital businesses are not really throwing themselves into content in pursuit of audience ratings. What they are after is customers – and their relationships with them go far deeper than broadcasters have been able to muster, despite in some cases having been on air for more than half a century.

Aside from series like Pop Idol, Big Brother and MasterChef, Top Gear is just about as global a programme brand as it gets and as soon as the break with the BBC became set, it didn’t take long for the only real global name in video distribution to be linked with the presenters. For a while Netflix was firm favourite, especially after it emerged that a non-complete clause in their contracts prevented the trio from signing with BBC commercial rival ITV. But Amazon’s name scarcely entered the frame.

In the narrative of VoD history, Jeff Bezos’s company and Reed Hastings’ have frequently been pitted against one other as common enemies. But as C21’s 2015 Digital Buyers Report ^[1] details, there are significant differences between the two.

One key distinction is the fact that Netflix is in 50 countries already and is aiming to complete its global roll-out in 200 by the end of next year. Amazon, meanwhile, only offers its Prime Instant Video service in the US, UK and Germany for now, having pulled its SVoD and DVD rental service, then known as LoveFilm, out of Scandinavia in summer 2013.

Giving the greenlight to a motoring show of such magnitude is either a precursor to expansion of the Prime Instant Video footprint (India is reputedly in Amazon’s sights) or the company is eyeing its cut of the tremendous licensing potential. Some of its homegrown drama series, such as Transparent and Bosch, have already been sold to broadcasters around the world.

For the BBC it’s probably the best outcome. While the pubcaster was happy to join Amazon in the revival of period crime drama Ripper Street last year, it’s safe to say it will not be hopping on board Clarkson, May and Hammond’s new vehicle.

The new show will exist in a universe far away from UK network television (unless of course Amazon is able to strike a licensing deal with ITV) and yet its presence will mean the pubcaster could even see an uptick in Top Gear merchandise sold through the world’s largest online retailer.

For the TV industry as a whole the deal is further evidence – if any were indeed needed – of the new paradigm in which it operates. VoD players like Amazon ^[2], Netflix ^[3] and myriad others – profiled in C21’s 2015 Digital Buyers Report ^[4] – are radically changing the face of entertainment.

Whatever one thinks of Jeremy Clarkson, his knack for a sound bite (or wildly offensive, massive publicity-generating comment) is unquestionable. The business of what used to be called ‘television’ is indeed experiencing a transformation akin to trading a biplane for a spaceship.

The change is almost as great as the one Jeffrey Tambor undertakes as a father who comes out as transgender to his family in Amazon’s first Golden Globe-winning series, Transparent. The retail giant might be wise to steer Clarkson away from voicing his opinions about its most successful original series to date.