Dear Love Island, it’s not us – it’s you
Love affair with reality show is fizzling out as TV figures fall
THE Love Island love affair looks to be fizzling out, with this season’s instalment of the reality show recording dwindling telly ratings.
Figures obtained by the Irish Mail on Sunday reveal the public’s romance with the ITV2 dating show, which is broadcast nightly on Virgin Media Ireland, is cooling considerably.
The Love Island season seven launch last Monday drew a television audience of 218,800.
But in the past week the figures dipped from 205,400 on Monday to
Ratings slumped from 218,800 to just 161,200
just 162,600 on Wednesday.
While Wednesday’s show did clash with the England versus Denmark Euros semi-final match, the show failed to rally for the rest of the week, with audiences rising slightly to 203,000 and 214,600 on the following nights before slumping again to 161,200 at the weekend.
Virgin Media Ireland, however, has adopted a sunnier outlook to the ratings. On Friday the station released a statement reporting bumper numbers based on an amalgamation of all viewing platforms.
In a statement, Virgin Media said this season’s series had smashed the magic one million number.
‘1.4 million viewers have tuned into the brand-new series of Love Island on Virgin Media Television to date. The opening episode has had 560,000 views to date across all platforms, with the series averaging a total of 450,000 views per episode (across all platforms). Total viewership across all platforms is in growth,’ the station added.
Love Island has lost some of its lustre, both here and in the UK where broadcasters are reporting a similar decline in TV ratings.
The show’s season seven launch rating was well below 2019’s premiere, which was watched by 3.3 million viewers.
It was also significantly down on last year’s winter edition, which drew 2.5 million for its first episode.
Meanwhile, former Irish contestant Maura Higgins, who featured prominently in the 2019 series, this week went public about her new relationship with Strictly Come Dancing star Giovanni Pernice.
Maura shared a photo of the couple embracing by the sea with her 3.2 million Instagram followers, captioning the photo, ‘I’m yours’, adding a love-heart emoji.
Italian dancer Giovanni, who has appeared on BBC One’s Strictly since 2015, posted a similar photo of them on his own account, saying, ‘You’re mine’.
Maura previously dated Curtis Pritchard, with whom she reached the 2019 final of Love Island, and she was in a relationship with another islander, Chris Taylor, until May this year.
Sunday night’s episode of Love Island will start at a later time due to the Euros final.
The football will kick off at 8pm between Italy and England and in order to give football and Love Island fans a chance to watch both, the reality show will start at the later time of 10pm.
niamh.walsh@mailonsunday.ie