The Business Secrets Behind the ‘Love Island’ Juggernaut

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Everyone in Hollywood loves a big, fat hit. And in television right now, there's pretty much no bigger hit these days than Love Island. At its peak in July on Peacock, the U.S. version of the show generated two billion minutes viewed in a single week, according to Nielsen, blowing away everything else in streaming. And the previous season was the most-watched streaming original of 2025, according to Luminate. On the most recent Comcast earnings call, executives specifically called out three things for helping ratings. World Cup, NBA playoffs, and Love Island. Hot People Hooking Up is basically sports now. And this show sometimes airs five or six nights a week. 36 episodes over six weeks, all produced in real time. But what's interesting about this show is that it wasn't an overnight success. It's based on a British format that caught on on ITV after a couple seasons. Then the U.S. version was first on CBS for three seasons. Nobody really cared. Then it moved to Peacock, got a little racier, didn't do much until its sixth season broke out. And then last year's seventh season erupted, largely thanks to social media. Now it's among the biggest brands in unscripted TV, with a reunion set to air August 31st, again on Peacock. I'm sure that'll be huge. Overseeing Love Island production is David George. He's the CEO of ITV America, which is the U.S. arm of the U.K.-based TV conglomerate. George was instrumental in the U.S. sale of the format back in 2018. He still oversees the property and a bunch of other shows like Queer Eye. He came to ITV more than a decade ago when the company bought Left Field Pictures, which makes Pawn Stars. I love talking about the unscripted TV business, so David George is here today, and we're going to get into the anatomy of a massive hit. What the market is like these days for selling reality shows, and why this particular show, Love Island, took off like it did. From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany, and this is The Town. Okay, we are here with David George, CEO of ITV America. Congratulations on your Emmy nomination, David. Your Emmy nominated Love Island. Yes. You know, I never thought those two things would go together, but I'm certainly happy. Happy for Ariana in particular, yes. Absolutely. Well, congrats to her. Alright, it's about time we did a Love Island episode, because it is one of the biggest shows in TV, and it's had a pretty fascinating journey to get here. First of all, who actually owns the show? Because we do a lot of, you know, one of our North Stars on this show is how to get rich in entertainment. And most of the time, it comes back to ownership. The really rich people own the shows, get a piece of the movie, and ITV owns Love Island? Who owns it? Yes, ITV owns Love Island, the brand of Love Island. Yes. Okay. What about the actual creators of the show? Was it a work-for-hire format creation situation, or are there creators that are getting paid on every episode? No, it was a show that was developed in the UK many years ago. It actually started out as a celebrity based show way, way back in the day. Wait, the celebrities would hook up? Yeah, well, there were celebrities going into the villa, so it was that style of show. And the show actually went dormant. It was off-air for quite some time. And then it was recommissioned to be on ITV2. So not even the main network, it was ITV2. And Motion Content came in as well, and they helped support the show from a finance standpoint. Okay. So they have a piece. Yeah, and so ultimately, you know, the show was brought back on ITV2, and you talk about the trajectory of the show. It didn't really come out of the gate gangbusters. It did okay in the UK, but it took a few seasons for it really to start hitting the cultural zeitgeist there. And I think, you know, we've seen that pattern kind of around the world and all the different territories that it's in. You know, it takes a little bit. Yeah, I want to talk about that a little, because why is that? Why? Because, you know, these days, you don't often get second and third chances to prove the value of a format. Why did it not catch on for a while? And then why did you guys keep getting chances to have it on the air? Well, look, I think the show always showed promise. Like, it was growing season to season, and so I think it was always a battle to get the show picked up again. And I can give you, I can take you back to the history of how this show got into the US, because it's actually kind of fascinating. But, you know, Love Island is a lesson in patience from my standpoint, because the show itself doesn't really fit into any bucket of what a cabler or a broadcaster or a streamer would want. Hot people hooking up is universal. I don't care what you say. It is, it is. Also, you know, hot people being rejected makes great television, too. I always say that. It does. It does. You know, back in 2018, we decided we were bringing this in, and we actually originally sold it to MTV. Huh. Back when MTV bought shows? Yes. You know, shockingly enough, they bought it, and you know, we were preparing, because if you look at the show format, there's so many episodes. It doesn't, the reason I say it doesn't fit well is because it's really expensive for a cabler to afford, right? And for a broadcaster, there's so many episodes of it, it's hard for them to find the real estate in their programming schedule to actually do it properly. You really got to commit. Yeah, and then in 2018, like, the streaming business was really like, you know, we don't do this size commit, like, we don't do this many hours in streaming. Like, we're six to ten, you know? Like, that's what we do. So, it didn't really fit any perfect model, but we were excited to bring it to MTV, and it actually ended up getting killed. And it got killed when management changed there. You know, there was a mandate that said, we need to invest in shows that we own. Right. We're going to talk about that topic, because that, to me, is the hottest topic in reality TV these days. Yeah. This question of ownership. But, so they didn't want it because they didn't own it. That was what I was told, yes. So, they basically paid us to go away. And I was like, okay, we're back to the drawing board here. And then CBS came in, and you know, we were kind of like. Sister company! Yeah, sister company. But, you know, they weren't as close as they, you know, they're kind of stepchildren, if that makes sense. They don't always get along at that point. But it was interesting, because CBS came in, and we were like, Love Island on CBS. Like, I don't know if Tom Selleck's the right lead-in. You know what I mean? Like, definitely a different thing, but you know, they really wanted to try the show. We wanted to get it away here in the U.S., and we couldn't really find the perfect dance partner. And so. Yeah. You know, that's what people said about Survivor and Big Brother, also. Really? The Tiffany Network is going to air Big Brother? Yeah. And 25 years later, it's still going strong. Well, they saw it as a great Big Brother companion, because they do lots of episodes on Big Brother. And they also saw it as a way to potentially age down the network. And so, you know, we went into that really thinking, like, okay, let's give this a shot. And the show did okay, you know, for a few seasons. You know, it didn't really find that demographic that we wanted it to. And I think that contributed to the slowness of it, because we were producing it for a broadcast network, which you know, in all honesty, like, CBS is an older demographic, and so you have to balance the kind of, you know, edgy nature of what the show is with the rules and the standards in broadcast. And so, you know. A lot of blurring. A lot of blurring. There were a lot of, like, you know, the thongs had to be of a certain length, if that makes sense. No! You had a thong sensor? Yeah, well, we couldn't even have thongs. So that was the big thing. Oh, wow! What is Love Island without thongs? I don't know, man. That's what it was. But, you know, the show did fine, and they actually wanted to pick it up for another season. But ultimately, you know, it ended up being a real financial conundrum for them, and they wanted to do it fewer nights, and they wanted Paramount Plus to figure out how they could contribute to it as well. And it just got really kind of messy with CBS, and, you know, ultimately, what ended up happening was there was a clause in the contract that basically said, if you do something that fundamentally changes the format or you ask for something that fundamentally changes the format, you know, it comes back to us. And so, you know, we had conversations with CBS about it, and you know, they were actually great. CBS were great partners through the whole thing, and they said, well, we'll let you take it back out to Marketplace as long as you can get, like, a similar deal to what we have. Did they have any schmuck insurance? it where they get a piece of it still to this day no wow when we took it out um it was supposed to go to hulu and and we knew that hulu was going was really going to be interested in it because the uk version had been working pretty well there and so we were in deep negotiations with hulu to bring it there like almost all the way down and i got i got a phone call from uh nbc and it was um it was susan rovner it was sharon vong and it was jenny groom and they said we hear that this format is available and i was like well yeah but we're we haven't really taken it to market and we're you know we're um you know we're kind of deep in in negotiations with somebody and they're like well let us come to you and pitch you so they they came to me and said you know they they brought what was called a symphony proposal i don't know if you know what a symphony proposal is oh yeah the comcast symphony we know we know all about that the comcast symphony yes the the major deck with all the big brands and and that won you over here's what i would say i was like okay this is interesting and we had produced um love island with sharon at cbs so there was a comfort level with her understanding the format yeah but i was also like very nervous because i was like this is peacock like this is a brand new like this this platform is very untested yes and you know i was like look like i can't have another swing and miss here if this if this show doesn't work um you know the may die here in the u.s and so you know i just had this like this feeling that like it it was going to be better creatively at peacock because they do more unscripted and they understand the show and all of that stuff so i called susan and i said i want to do love island with you but you're not going to get the show and i said the reason you're not going to get the show is because you know peacock is not as as established of a service as the other you know place that we are and i said but if you commit to two seasons oh there you go you know i i go then then you know we can we can bring we can potentially bring you the show with the budget i mean the journal reported that it's 40 million dollars a season which is high for an unscripted show and they committed to that she called me back the next day and said we're going to give you the two full seasons and i called hulu and i said are you guys going to do two seasons and they said no and that was how it landed on peacock was there a thong commitment as well well what i said was i'm going to do two seasons and they said no and that was what's interesting was like when when they first talked to me about it like they basically were like they wanted it to be on nbc and i was like i was like well what about peacock and they're like you'd consider putting it on peacock and i said well yeah and they were like okay that's great and in the back of my head i'm like why not both though well peacock solves both to both of the issues that i ran into at cbs right it's real estate they can do five six nights a week no problem yes right right also it needs to be an edgy show to work like to get to that younger demographic it can't be kind of a watered down version of what the show is supposed to be and i knew that peacock we could we could edge this thing up we could go for it we could really really you know creatively go for what the core of the show was supposed to be so well that was going to be my next question is why do you think it works i asked this of chris colin of love is blind as well and it's a fascinating question in the end of the day and i think it's a fascinating question and i think it's a fascinating question and i think it's a fascinating question because as you know there are so many formats and there are so many swings in this arena and yet certain formats become these franchises so what about the current incarnation of love island in your opinion is why it's so big my history in unscripted like the first show i ever did was this show called trl back in the day if you remember of course you don't have to talk to me about that yeah i was after school kid watching trl carson carson daily yeah backstreet boys all yeah and and it's the show that i actually psyched the most when i'm talking about love island because it created this connection with the fans right and so on trl like the fans were so frenzied about any particular artist right like they would vote for this artist and i have to be about this artist and i don't like this other artist and that connection to the audience is the critical part of any unscripted show how how the creative actually connects back into the audience i create i helped create this show alone um back you know when i was at left field and that also has the same type of thing where like you identify with the people who are in that situation and when i look at love island to me it is it is so culturally relevant right now because dating for the younger generation is so different than what it was like for you and i growing up it's like it happens on your phone you just got through covid there's no human interaction and love island is this grand dating experiment in a bubble that you're basically watching with your friends and you're picking out who you want to root for and who you want to vote for it's american idol for hooking up 100 like everybody can relate to somebody who is in that villain what they're going through and why they become friends with somebody or why they don't like somebody and so it creates that kind of digital and social chatter um you know that really really like creates community around it and you can see it in the watch parties and you know all of these things that are happening peripheral to the show now there's this insane connection to these people who are going in there and experiencing this like dating experiment on steroids yeah it seems to me these days that you really can't have a reality hit on any kind of scale without a huge social component we saw this with dancing with the stars over the past couple seasons where that is the definition of an old stodgy show but they managed to cast social media stars and people that had followings and were doing tiktok dances and things like that and lo and behold the most recent season went through the roof on the ratings because people could follow along and that's kind of what the expectation is nowadays for fans of unscripted shows is that they need to be following along on their social media platforms and they need to be following along on their social platforms as well yeah it it one drives the other right like we what i would say too what's very unique about love island is because we produce this show in real time you know it's it's turned in you know 24 to 32 hours you have to watch you you know you have to stay up on it if you want to be a part of the conversation otherwise you're going to get left behind and so that drives so much social chatter which then drives people back to watch the show every single night and you know it was it was a lot of fun and it was a lot of fun and it was a lot it was done by design like that that is that was the the format design and you know the question i get from all the buyers now is like well how can i get a love island like how do i make a love island and i'm like you got to be patient you got to grow these things you gotta you gotta nurture these types of things because there's not enough patience now in our marketplace it's it's literally like everybody looks at quarter to quarter growth and and all that stuff and so you know to me like the secret sauce is that quick turn and that connection to the audience and and when you are making the show and your producers are deciding what to focus on what have you found are the more popular storylines things to focus on is it really just the depravity the the people who are willing to just be outrageous or is there something else going on that you guys see in the in the urgency of producing it i think people because the show is so observational right like it's a massive production there's like 500 people in fiji making this show there's hundreds there's a hundred there's that puts survivor to shame yeah the survivor doesn't like us because we take all the hotel rooms for crew like trust me there's a whole like east coast west coast thing going on oh don't you know what is on the the hall of fame mount rushmore this show do not go after probes i'm not i'll come after you there's a battle for hotel rooms in fiji he is untouchable on this show but but what i would say is like you know we produce this show in real time we listen to what the audience is saying and you know we we pick up on what the audience is talking about and what we what we want to feature more in any particular show but i think what the audience really looks for are are people being real or fake yeah authenticity authenticity is so key and like the number one thing people say like is that person being real with that person or not or are they are they here because they want to be social famous or they really want to be a part of love and here for the right reasons yeah and and and ultimately like that is the number one thing that i think people are talking about online is like they're trying to figure out what the true intentions are of every single person that's in this show so it's almost a guessing game by the way do you guys get do you get 360 deals with your cast do you participate if they go off and do a drink deal or uh endorsements we we don't participate in the deals that they're doing with brands there's an approval process that has to happen you know because there are brands that are paying lots of money to be a part of love island but i'm saying when they're done like for two years after the show you don't you don't take a piece of that no we don't we don't take a piece of the brand the the deals that the brands are making specifically with the islanders we are we are watching them they do need approvals on these things and you know there is a big process i mean i will tell you this like after season seven i think we had over 300 brands reach out to us directly and say we want to do a brand deal with so and so islander or so and so and you know that's that was when a light bulb clicked with us and we just and said wow, we're not just making a television show here, stars we're making yeah influencers like this is but that's what led to the whole you know the bethany frankel litigation all that where these people can get rich and sometimes the producers will want pieces of that you're saying you're you're benefiting so much on the front end with the brands wanting to be associated with the show that you don't necessarily care what they do when they're off the show well we do care because there's brand alignment right like it's like you know ultimately these these brands are coming at these islanders because they really want to be associated with love island in some way shape or form and so you know we may we may charge a fee to the brands but not to the islanders directly you know if they want to use the love island ip or oh you know those types of things you know but but we're we don't want to we don't want to we don't want to be in the islanders pockets if that makes sense right this episode is brought to you by disney plus for your emmy consideration taylor swift the era's tour the final show nominated for five emmy awards including outstanding variety special pre-recorded the final night of the history breaking tour is now streaming on disney plus this episode is brought to you by linkedin ads ever invest in something that seemed incredible at first but didn't live up to the hype marketers know that feeling they optimize for the numbers that look great impressions reach and reacts but when they don't show revenue well that's a not so great conversation with the cfo 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consideration so you mentioned this idea of ownership which i always come back to and the reluctance of the platforms to share ownership and lots of platforms reject shows they don't own these days is that the dominant narrative in unscripted these days you know it used to be a volume play where you're just taking as many swings as you can and getting your show on whatever cable network you're using and you're and maybe next thing you know you wake up and you've done 10 seasons of it it seems like that has kind of gone away as these cable networks have pulled so far back on their content budgets and their focus now is really on quality and getting that franchise ip associated with a global streamer or national in peacock's case and building up the ip of the shows that actually matter is the focus is that is that really what you stress about in your job yeah look i think everybody knows the economics of production are in decline right like so ownership is so important now to how you're building an actual business out like back in the glory days of cable you could just sell a show you know do do 50 episodes of it and make x amount of dollars off of it and that was perfect example the company you came from produced pawn stars and that was a huge asset i mean look like you know pawn stars we were doing you know at peak we did 105 episodes of that one year and you owned it we do not own pawn stars now and you don't even own it and yet the company was bought for hundreds of millions of dollars by itv unbelievable that was the heyday really that yeah early mid 2010s when all of these like ramshackle reality producers were becoming you know hundreds of millions of dollars richer off of the sale of their company to these big european conglomerates yeah trust me that was the glory day um times have changed is what i would tell you i never really understood that because ultimately you guys didn't own pawn stars but you were attached to it so you sort of had to be producing it because why wouldn't they just buy the ip and fire you pawn stars was created by by us at left field so we created it but the market that time was you just sold all the rights into the network right like that they would take control but the budgets were so healthy you were like i don't care i'm gonna i'm gonna make enough money out of the production that that's no longer the case with with the cable shows and i would even broadcast shows like all the budgets have been coming down guys like david zazloff that was their whole job at discovery and then scripts was to cut the budgets of the shows so much where the margin was so razor thin that the producers wouldn't quit they still made a little money on it so they wouldn't completely quit but you captured all the value yeah i mean they they you know what i like to say is they they would like to cut the budget just enough for you to stay in business but not have you go out of business right it's it's so toxic yeah it was it was just it was just a strange time but you know being a part of itv and being a part of you know a place that does own shows based on the european model you know it's it's just a completely different business and and i will say this about love island another thing that i think is really important is that you know if you're a the reason why we felt like peacock was a good place to do the show was because it was a good deal they're they're not a they're not a global streamer right they don't need to take all rights and perpetuity and global you know everything out of what they're doing and so peacock in a strange way is is set up to be a better partner to global formats than a netflix or an amazon who are going to sit there and say like well the show's already set up in in the uk or it's set up in the united states or it's set up in germany and those are important territories for us and so like the value of this is not as great to us so and you can go off and sell love island usa in markets around the world or are you just reserving other versions of love island for different markets other versions for other markets so i think love island's in something like 28 territories now different versions so ultimately itv is selling that into every other market the love island brand into every other market love island usa is you know the the big kahuna right now but i bet love island usa would do well in other countries dumb americans hooking up yeah the the tape does really well so we keep levels of distribution around the tape and so i know for a fact like they they put like the prior season in australia and it did incredible the australian md you know for itv was calling me saying this show was like insane doing insanely well here so well in love island uk does pretty well here too people like that version yeah i mean it was top five on on hulu so yeah you know so the economics of it are just different because you own it you can monetize it you can do merchandising you can do all of these different things and create supplemental income and revenue so you don't have to be so reliant on production margin and i think that's the name of the game moving forward it's not going to be about making tons of money on shows it's going to be about how you create a 360 business around things so what is the future of the love island ip well i look what i would say is we we look at the love island ip like it's sports and i know that sounds kind of you know no i get it because listen nbc universal thinks of it as sports too they cited three things in their earnings this past quarter they cited world cup nba and love island yeah and i gotta be honest with you i don't know the all the economics but i gotta think love island is probably the best roi for them oh clearly i gotta believe it's driving the most or at least the best r.o.i. for them original subscriptions for them as well so you know we look at it as like okay we now have a brand that is broken through just a an unscripted show so we're developing spinoffs you know we are you know talking about scripted opportunities we're doing merchandising deals we're doing all of these things to create peripheral value you know alongside peacock and you know in certain ways but also on global things like we you know we did a huge you know global deal with poppy and Poppy is now in a lot of different versions around the world. So we're really trying to create a business around this and ultimately, I look at Love Island like it can live anywhere. The original three seasons that we did on CBS, they were charting in Netflix when they licensed them in the top five. Love Island UK, top three show on Hulu. So the brand can live in multiple places. It can live in different worlds. It can live in different platforms. So the challenge for me now is, well, how do I take advantage of this opportunity, but also not oversaturate the brand. Ruin the essence. Yeah, oversaturate the brand so people are like, I can't look anywhere without a Love Island thing. You don't want to millionaire it. No, you don't want to millionaire it. But like I said, spinoffs in other places, that could be a possibility down the road. We don't know. Yeah, do it different locales. First of all, I love this. I love this idea of you and Survivor. Love Island and Survivor like jockeying for hotel rooms. in fiji they probably think they're better than you don't they yeah well they have they have seniority i will say that they do and they're and you know what they're they're they're there for the competition they don't care who's hooking up yeah they're there for the for the glory of it yeah and i gotta be honest with you there's not that many nice hotels to put people in in fiji so it it really is kind of a battle but it's uh it's all in good fun so good stuff um that's really funny well congratulations on the show craig you're a viewer do you have any other questions my wife is a viewer i'm kind of second hand viewer yes what you should really do david you should lean in and just make turn it into the nfl where you divide all the rights up where monday night you have to watch on nbc tuesday nights on amazon thursday nights on peacock that's how you can yes sunday night love island yeah you know like you never know that could end up happening yeah you get tony romo to announce it so so when is your deal up when it when are they when is peacock gonna have to back up the brings truck to keep the show well they they have perpetual options but i'd like to say we have leverage so you never know where those two things are going to meet so you may not even know but if you had to estimate the value of the overall love island ip and franchise what would you say it depends on who you're talking to i think to itv to itv um you know it's it's it's hundreds of millions of dollars you know i don't know i don't know the exact figure um yeah i mean maybe you get to that level um you know but what i would say is like at peacock like if you look at what it's done for that platform in terms of adding new subscribers aging it down making it a part of the conversation you know i i've heard through the grapevine that like they've they sell out ad inventory against it and you know they may even be asking advertisers to you know take other ad inventory to be able to get a love island yeah they use it as a lure right and there were in the journal reports that they added two million subscribers last season just for in the love island period and i'm sure this season was probably more yeah so so you look at it and you think about that value that's being created in the in the nbc ecosystem and then also the value it's being created you know in the itv ecosystem i mean then you're in the billions you're definitely in the billions yeah all right well it's a fascinating success story congratulations hot people hooking up forever all the way to the end of the year always works thank you it does nice nice to see you man we're back with the call sheet craig we got a big horror movie this weekend it's been a while honestly since we've had horror this summer's been light it was um evil dead burn was in july but not a lot of big wide release horror movies and this weekend we got insidious out of the further this does not have rose burn in it this is like a new cast it's kind of like a spin-off series i i didn't realize just how profitable every insidious movie is i mean they basically all cost like five to ten million bucks and they all make 150 million plus yeah this was james wan's big claim to fame when this movie initially hit it was like made for a million bucks and gross like a hundred and he had arrived um now because of james wan's involvement they get to put on the billboards that this is from the studio that brought you obsession and backrooms blumhouse atomic monster so good for you them they're advertising that i don't know the last one insidious the red door opened to 33 million and went on to gross 189 worldwide unbelievable these movies are so profitable what do you think on this one the tracking that i have seen is a little bit less for this one i've seen a sort of around 25 so let's set the line at 25 what do you get i think it's a little bit lower because it doesn't have there were a few in the late 2010s that didn't have roseburn but this is like a new cast so it's kind of like a a spin-off relaunching in a sense cashed wise so nrg has it at 26 i don't know some are higher some are lower let's let's put the line at 25 i think i would take the under oh you are interesting i'm gonna take the over just because it's been a while in the horror space and that audience needs to be fed and this will feed them that's right they'll eat anything they can get their hands on um yeah yeah i guess i'm just betting on the fact that this is an unknown cast and we're really deep in this franchise i know how many more can they do but you know what they know what they're doing so yeah we'll see yeah it'll be interesting because obviously it's not going to be number one spider-man is still there and the odyssey is still kicking so this could end up being a pretty significant august at the movies i mean it's already up 77 last weekend from the year before and we could look we could see some pretty record numbers this august yeah in the horror game the big we're leading up to zach crager's resident evil in mid september it feels like that's going to be the next big splashy horror play but now there's like there's also there's this mutiny movie jason statham sure this weekend and there's like dozens of releases like the the dumping ground of august seems to still be the dumping ground but then there's like a ridley scott movie from disney that is coming out uh dog stars and then there's a couple others before labor day so we'll see don't forget spa weekend don't forget spa weekend i know it's funny seth rogan was was posting on instagram that super bad came out 19 years ago like this weekend and it's funny to think about that the august slot and what that used to be like for comedy and now we've got spa weekend written by the guys who wrote the hangover sure okay and bad moms but bad moms did very well we'll see the tracking on spa weekend and we'll see you next week again not quite as good it's like less than five million but you know what any comedy i want any comedy to do well that's hopefully it'll over perform all right that's the show for today i want to thank my guest david george producer greg horlbeck our editors jesse lopez and stephano sanchez and i want to thank you we'll see you one more time this week this episode is brought to you by peacock presenting all her fault nominated for seven emmy awards including outstanding limited series and nominations for both sarah snook and dakota fanning npr praises the series exceptional performances and the rap calls the series an adrenaline-filled psychological thriller full of jaw-dropping twists and turns all her fault is streaming now only on peacock endless summer escapes start here travel the worlds of netflix irl inspired by fan favorites like stranger things and squid game brave the upside down face off with the front man play leveled up arcade games shop exclusive merch and enjoy themed 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