Love Island viewing stats: wrap up

We’ve had eight weeks of Love Island (I know, where did the time go?) with the series ending on Monday Evening.

The viewing stats were quite different in numbers from previous series, however- I don’t think the  press for the decreasing viewing stats should be the biggest takeaway here, as there have been some incredibly high viewing figures when we break it down, which we’ll look at later.

The beginning of the season (June 28) viewing figures were at 2.46 million overnight viewers, and eight weeks later, almost three million people tuned in to watch Millie Court and Liam Reardon be crowned winners of this year's Love Island.

The show's finale had an average live audience of 2.8 million tuning in to watch the fashion buyer’s administrator from Essex, 24, and the bricklayer from Wales, 22, beat Chloe Burrows and Toby Aromolaran in the final two.

This figure is a 22% drop from the 3.6 million who tuned in to the climax of the last summer series in 2019, but it is also an improvement on the figures for last year's inaugural winter series, as this year’s finale had 430,000 more viewers than the winter season.

As for even more positive viewing stats, the show went out on a series high with the biggest ratings episode of the current season by 160,000 viewers. 

And nearly 48 hours later, a further 400,000 viewers have so far watched the episode on ITV Hub, bringing the audience to 3.2 million viewers for the final.

An even more exciting figure shows that excluding Saturdays, and outside of football, Love Island has been the most watched TV show for 16-34 year olds, which is a big audience group.

And in terms of viewing on ITV Hub, formerly ITV Player, brought to us about 6 years ago- Series 7 of Love Island is currently on track to be the most watched series ever.

All in all, even though this year’s finale didn’t beat the summer series’ finale figures of 2019, there are some really positive takeaways and highlights, especially considering the ever growing popularity of VOD.