Love Island will come to an end on Monday evening, marked by ostentatious weeping and much gnashing of whitened teeth. And that will just be the viewers.
Millions are expected to watch the finale either at home or at public viewing parties in bars and cinemas to find out which couple has won the top prize of £50,000. And after that, who is able to best monetise their newfound celebrity.
Alongside the aim of the programme – finding love – the £50,000 top prize is a further incentive. But the sum pales in significance compared with the potential media earnings of winners and losers alike.
“They’ve got the potential to earn high six figures in the first year just from social,” says Harry Hugo, the co-founder of the Goat Agency, which works with social media stars to promote businesses.
“Even if you’re a dull character, if you know how to play the game and you know what the producers are looking for then you have big earnings potential. The most interesting thing is that they don’t know they are influencers or they have the following until they leave the building. They’ll go from having 1,000 followers to a million.”
Contestants who have already been ejected from the show have a head-start in attempting to make the most of their fame, charging thousands of pounds for personal appearances at club nights.
Adam Collard, a 22-year old personal trainer who lasted a month on the show before being dumped, has already announced a 61-date tour fitting in multiple bookings on the same night at clubs across the UK, from Llandudno to Crawley. Eyal Booker, another former contestant, is charging £850 for a sponsored Instagram post, according to figures obtained by the Guardian.
Love Island’s status as a cultural phenomenon has convinced young viewers to watch traditional live television night after night, turning it into a commercial powerhouse. In the process it has helped boost revenue at ITV, revive the channel’s ITV Hub catch-up service, and spawned an endless degree of spin-off enterprises as brands rush to get a piece of the action.
A team of economists at the consultancy Frontier Economics concluded that contestants who last the full duration of the series can be expected to earn about £2.3m over the next five years, with a strong correlation between the time spent on screen and earning potential.
Jack Fincham and Dani Dyer, the bookies’ favourites to win the series, could earnmore than £500,000 each in their first year outside the villa, based on what happened to last year’s winners, Kem Cetinay and Amber Davies.
“Some of previous years’ contestants have managed to secure book deals and even spin-off TV series,” the consultancy said, recommending that contestants focus on avoiding too much trouble and staying on the show for as long as possible. “Even an ordinary ex-Islander who goes through life endorsing protein powder on Instagram can reportedly make close to a £1m a year.”
The showrunners are understandably keen to capture some of this income. Producers have confirmed that contestant contracts entitle them to a percentage of their future earnings. Similar deals have been developed between the stars and producers of the rival reality show The Only Way Is Essex.
Unlike the reality TV stars of the 2000s, who were dependent on increasingly desperate stunts to remain in the tabloids and be remembered after their show had finished, the Islanders will keep their hundreds of thousands of Instagram followersfor years afterwards.
This has led to speculation that social media platforms could be tempted to create their own Love Island-style programmes in order to control both the show and the conversation around it.
“How long until one of these streaming sites makes their own show?” asked Hugo. “It’s the last thing you watch at night and it’s the first thing you talk about in the morning at work.”
