Love Island 2023: Launch episode sees ITV2 show lose a million viewers compared to last year

Love Island launched its landmark 10th season on Monday night (June 5), and was watched by 1.3 million people, a million less than this time last year. It’s a worrying downward trend for the show.

The 2022 summer series, which was won by Davide Sanclimenti and Ekin-Su Cülcüloğlu, had an average TV audience of 2.4 million viewers per episode, with the launch episode of the show four years ago attracting over three million viewers.

The sharp decline in audience comes amid suggestions that the ITV 2 show has simply lost its appeal. However, when the viewing figures from ITV’s streaming service, ITVX were added, the number rose to 1.7 million.

Despite dwindling viewers, the broadcast noted that Love Island was the second most-watched programme in its time slot and attracted the biggest audience of the day among 16 to 34-year-old viewers.

In a bid to keep fresh, the format was slightly altered this year with boys and girls appearing at the same time. Couples were also voted for by the public, with host Maya Jama later asking girls to step forward if they were not happy with their couple.

Metro’s reviewer Tori Brazier wrote: "It was all very copy and paste unfortunately - it seems Love Island needs that overdue format shake-up right about now."

She added that there were some funny "unscripted moments that can’t really be forced, and we can only hope that there will be more gems heading our way over the next - potentially very long - eight weeks".