DriveTribe was formed in 2015 after TV presenters Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May left the BBC show TopGear. The website and application are a club of interests in the automotive and related automotive areas. Clarkson, Hammond and May are the owners, but other people manage the operations and technical issues. FoodTribe, a social network about food, also operates on the same platform.
“For many months we have been facing serious industry challenges that, unfortunately, are not going away. The long-term global shortage of computer chips has caused a number of problems for the auto industry and led to severe cuts in the industry’s marketing budgets. This has created an incredibly challenging operating environment for companies like ours that rely on advertising. “So, unfortunately, we will be closing the DriveTribe and FoodTribe websites and apps, and the business behind them, at the end of this month,” the British trio said in a statement.
Richard Hammond will be keeping the DriveTribe community alive through “regular” social media channels, which will continue to exist after the closure of the site and app. There he will share information about his new projects, including the Smallest Cog Workshop. Clarkson and May, in turn, will support their colleague and periodically appear in his videos.
The Drive publication notes: according to insiders, the DriveTribe and FoodTribe projects “burned” millions of dollars while creating websites and applications, while they were mainly financed by the leaders’ own funds. And the drop in advertising revenue during the coronavirus pandemic finally “finished off” the social network.