Love Island is a famous reality TV show concept that revolves around matchmaking on a remote island. The app plays a central part in the show as audience decides what happens next through mobile voting.
This two-screen concept has been a tremendous success in terms of viewership and app engagement: 100's of thousands app downloads, record-breaking viewer counts and loads of positive feedback.
In Love Island, a group of single “Islanders” come together in a villa to date, complete challenges and compete for a cash prize. Every few days the Islanders form new couples, and those who are left without a pair might get dumped from the island. The final remaining couple can win the money, each other, both, or leave the island empty-handed.
Voting is sometimes used almost in real time on Love Island. For example, an elimination vote is announced on Friday night. The vote starts immediately around 21.00 in the evening, takes an hour, and the result is revealed the same night to the contestants at 22.30. The show airs on the following day.
As apps and voting are scripted into the show like this, it requires a certain level of quality, reliability and scalability from the tools used. At the same time, the fan engagement features and visuals need to fit the happy-go-lucky image of the show.
TV advertisement of Love Island Italy, one of the shows where our app has been used.
Creating the experience
We have been working with the UK-born production company ITV Studios and the Love Island brand since 2018. The first Love Island season that used an app built with Choicely was Love Island Finland 2019. Since then our Love Island apps have been used in several Love Island seasons in Italy, Czech & Slovakia and in Finland.
We’ve made sure to create great experiences for our customers – the production company and the broadcaster – by training the app and app builder users in-person. We’ve also given customer support right where the shows have been filmed especially in the early seasons.
We also put effort into making the best possible app for the audience of the show. Regardless of season or country, most of the Love Island apps have comprised of:
- Voting
- News about the show
- Islander bios
- Videos: either embedded, integrated video player from the broadcaster, or both
- Integration to the broadcaster’s digital advertising platform
- Episodes and related content
- Merch store
- Countdown (to episodes or votes)
Click on the story below to see some of the Love Island apps we’ve made:
The production teams have done a great job in constantly updating and organizing the app around customers’ needs, so the apps live with the show.
When working with a TV show brand like Love Island it’s also good to be bold in making the most out of the interactive features. On the season 2 of Love Island Finland we and the production team did something that wasn’t done before: we let the audience decide all the couples in one vote. This might have seemed tricky to do at first, but it all went well, and the audience truly got to influence what happens on the screen!
Since our second Love Island season, Love Island Italy, we have also provided the production team with ‘Islander chat solutions’ which gives the Islanders only the smartphone functionalities they need and are allowed to use: chat with the production team, and a camera – no access to other services.
Love Island is a great format that fully embraces the second screen strategy where they can capture the viewers’ attention on two screens: TV and mobile. The broadcaster can cross-sell shows and advertise to a relevant audience on two platforms at once.
Results
Our collaboration with Love Island has been very rewarding and fruitful. The engaging and interactive nature of the show is apparent in the numbers of the app and the TV show.
Here are some of the highlights:
- On Finland season 1 the app got over 140 000 downloads
- In Czech & Slovakia, the first season show was TV channel Voyo’s most watched program
- ...until the start of 2nd season – which doubled the numbers...
- ...where the app got over 370 000 downloads
- Without revealing the actual numbers – the central role of the app shows as very high amount of sessions and engagement in the app throughout the seasons
- Praises from customers, like the one below:
“A+ experience with a very flexible team that always delivers.”
Tomáš Fišer
Executive Producer
TV Nova / Love Island Czech & Slovakia
The story with Love Island continues.
Learn more about TV Show apps built without coding.
