Are Love Island’s low viewing figures an indication the tide has turned on the show?

The 2023 winter season of ITV’s popular reality show Love Island has finished, with fans celebrating the winning couple of Sanam Harrinanan and Kai Fagan as King and Queen of the island, walking away with the £50k prize money. However, their celebrations might be short lived, as the most recent season has been deemed “boring” by some media commentators.

There’s long been a theory that the winter seasons of Love Island have never been a ratings puller, with many waiting for things to heat up in the Villa during the summer months. But is it simply a case of wrong time, wrong place of Love Island, or has some of its charm diminished for more “sophisticated” reality contests - we’re looking at you, The Traitors.

With the BBC’s competition, hosted by Claudia Winkleman, becoming a celebrated work since its first broadcast in late 2022, other countries have picked up the format - with Australia and the United States both boasting their own localised versions. But does that mean there is no love for Love Island anymore?

Well - no, not quite. Looking at the viewing figures for both the opening episode and season finale across the last six years, it would appear that it’s not so much the format but instead perhaps the cast members involved. Love Island still on average maintains a viewership of over 2.5 million people, but compare that to The Traitors opening and season finale figures:

It shows quite the dramatic viewership between the two shows. Perhaps it is the novelty that The Traitors was a brand new show with a format people weren’t too familiar with, or perhaps the rise in popularity of the whodunnit once again, thanks to films such as Knives Out, is the reason people were more inclined to tune into the BBC programme rather than Love Island.

Though the viewing figures might also be a false equivalency until the summer season of Love Island gets underway, it does seem a very steep drop compared to the 2022 winter season viewing figures. Maybe we’ve just become too accustomed to Love Island - maybe we’re just bored of it.

Or maybe, we just really are thirstier during the summer months - hence the show’s popularity during the warmer months of the year.