I’m A Celebrity viewing figures shrink in 2023: is Nigel Farage to blame, is it the least popular season ever?

I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here! viewership fell sharply in the first week of the new season on ITV this month, and it’s unlikely that they will have picked up since. The data for the first week of the latest series shows that viewership is down significantly on last year, with two million fewer viewers watching the launch show this time around.

This year 10.2 million people watched the launch episode within the first seven days of its first broadcast, compared to 12.3 million in 2022. Additionally, viewership held up fairly well throughout the show last year, with a series of average of 10.9 million per episode, and 11.8 million for the final.

This year, data for the first eight days is currently available, and it already shows a drop of 1.5 million less than halfway through the show. Whilst the current series is more popular than the second Welsh-set season in 2021, it has underperformed every series filmed in Australia since 2015.

It remains to be seen if viewership picked up after the first week, but if it continued to drop off as the series continued, then this season of the show prove to be less popular than season seven in 2007, which currently sits in last place with an average viewership of 7.3 million per episode 

Why has I’m A Celebrity viewership decreased?

It’s possible that the drop in viewing figures is a result of Nigel Farage’s involvement in this series. It was announced ahead of the launch episode that the right wing politician was this year’s headline star, and was reportedly offered a £1.5 million deal to take part in the show.

Whilst news of Farage’s participation was hoped to boost ratings, it seems to have had the opposite effect. Many fans pledged not to watch the show because of his involvement, believing that ITV would rehabilitate a deeply controversial public figure, in much the same way that Matt Hancock attempted to improve his public image by appearing on the show last year.

Whether it is because of this boycott that viewership dropped so dramatically is impossible to judge, but it seems that ITV made a serious misjudgement in signing Farage. Additionally, even fans of Farage have complained about the latest season, claiming that ITV is reducing Farage’s air time and selectively airing clips that make him look silly, though the broadcaster has denied this.

Therefore, it’s possible that both those who loathe and those who love Farage has switched off this year, though for very different reasons. Other factors affecting the popularity of the show this year was the apparently boring atmosphere at the camp, a result of persistent bad weather, and the early exit of Jamie Lynn Spears, another big name contestant.