Peacock seems to have another bombshell on its hands with Love Island USA Season 7.
The streamer gave some new insights on the series’ performance Tuesday, after Luminate data revealed last week that Season 7 had already set a new bar for the U.S. edition of the reality dating competition with more than 1B minutes viewed across just nine episodes.
Love Island USA ranked as the No. 2 streaming original title during the week of June 9, per preliminary Nielsen data shared by NBCUniversal. That includes some of the viewing encapsulated in Luminate’s data, though only for the second week of episodes.
Season 7 debuted on June 3. Also, it’s important to note that Nielsen doesn’t differentiate between seasons in its reporting. Luminate’s data captured only the viewing for the current season.
However, NBCUniversal also supplied some proprietary data of its own to back up Season 7’s unprecedented performance. Per the company, Day 1’s average audience has quadrupled since the season premiered.
So far, the June 23 episode is the most-watched season-to-date.
That should come as no surprise, given it marked the beginning of Casa Amor. Ariana Madix sent all the ladies to a second villa in Fiji to explore connections with a new set of men while the original group of guys hung back and met a new set of women. They’ll get a week together before everyone regroups at the main villa, and drama is sure to ensue, which is why these episodes typically draw bigger viewership numbers than the beginning of the season.
Season 6, which was the first installment of the U.S. offshoot to really hit the cultural zeitgeist, didn’t crack a billion minutes viewed until the week of July 8 (right around Casa Amor).
To that point, it appears that Season 7 is building upon last summer’s success. Peacock says that 39% of Love Island USA viewers this season are new to the series.
The new season also has the platform’s biggest mobile audience for an entertainment series ever, with nearly 30% of usage occurring on mobile devices. That’s an interesting stat that likely speaks to the average age of the audience tuning in for Love Island USA, which is much younger and therefore more likely to be using a mobile device to watch.
Also speaking to the younger audience capture, this month alone Love Island USA has racked up 54M social interactions across Instagram, Facebook, X, and YouTube, ranking as the most talked about entertainment series across all of television. On TikTok, Season 7 boasts 623M video views to-date, up 232% versus Season 6.
This has been a fascinating journey for Love Island USA, which has had a bit of a bumpy start as it sought to mirror the success of its predecessor, Love Island UK. But, by the time the U.S. version launched, the UK edition had already gained popularity in the States, and it proved difficult for the new iteration to gain momentum with that audience.
The show’s meteoric rise last season is likely due to a few factors. The cast does seem to have secured audience interest in a way that previous casts did not. That explains why Peacock has granted a whole new reality series to that cast, setting Love Island: Beyond the Villa to debut in July. The trailer for that series has already amassed over 14M views and 1.3M social engagements in its first 24 hours, NBCU says.
Additionally, Vanderpump Rules‘ Ariana Madix also joined the series as its host last season, which undoubtedly elevated its profile as well. And, of course, last season’s drama had social media, particularly TikTok, ablaze with commentary, which likely was a driving force behind increased engagement — and based on this new data from NBCU, it appears social media is a contributing factor this year, too.
Love Island USA is produced by ITV America. The series is based on a format owned by Lifted Entertainment and GroupM Motion Entertainment and distributed by ITV Studios.
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