Latest series of ITV hit show Love Island bows out with peak audience of 3.4m
As ITV’s Love Island bowed out last night, 2.8 million people tuned in live and a peak audience of 3.4 million watched Ekin-Su and Davide crowned winners. Series eight finished on par with 2021’s series finale, showing that the love for Love Island hasn’t waned.
Love Island winners Ekin-Su and Davide / ITV
Across its eight-week run, an average of 2 million people tuned in each night at 9pm, also matching the last series’ live viewing figures. More viewers do tune in to catch up on ITV Hub; while this data is not yet available for series eight, 2021’s run racked up an average extra 1.2 million viewers an episode.
Just as the show wrapped, ITV broke the news it had snapped up the rights to legacy reality format Big Brother. ITV’s Big Brother bet appears to answer a need to fill its fledgling streamer ITVX and fight for those younger viewers.
ITV has been doubling down on reality lately, renewing Love Island for a ninth series and commissioning a winter addition filmed in South Africa.
Bringing back Big Brother and more Love Island does open the broadcaster up to more scrutiny around the duty of care of contestants and brand safety. Ofcom received a staggering 5,000 complaints in just two weeks of this series, leading to ITV boss Kevin Lygo admitting the broadcaster would “sit down and review” the show after this series ended.
Love Island’s 2022 sponsorships
This year ITV swapped its fast fashion sponsors Misguided and I Saw It First for second-hand retailer eBay, giving it the opportunity to stock the wardrobes in the villa. According to eBay, since the sponsorship announcement the marketplace has seen 700% more searches for ‘pre-loved fashion,’ and its Google search has been up 756% for the term ‘ebay preloved clothes.’
In a unique move, eBay is hosting a charity auction for fans to buy the outfits worn by the Islanders on the eBay x Love Island Auction Hub.
“Since the partnership, it’s been great to see mindsets and conversations around pre-loved fashion shifting, and we hope that through this auction fans of the show will be inspired to shop and put pre-loved fashion center stage,” said Jemma Tadd, head of fashion at eBay.
Other sponsors included Boots, Reddit, O2 and Screen with Envy.
Last year the broadcaster raked in a hefty £73m for Love Island’s eight-week run, largely through deals with the likes of Spotify, JD Sports, Just Eat, Tinder, WKD, Cloud Nine and Wrigley’s Extra. We will be watching to see if ITV’s latest sponsorships can amass the same figures.