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House of the Dragon reigned over the Nielsen streaming charts from July 8 to 14, but it looks like Love Island is the real winner here.
The reality dating series achieved its first billion-minute week during this interval, thanks to the buzz around Season 6 of the U.S.-spinoff. By just surpassing that milestone, the series appeared in Nielsen’s overall streaming list for the first time.
By July 8, Love Island USA was about three weeks into its latest season, which airs nearly in real time. It had already been gaining steam, as illustrated by the 673M minutes it racked up the week prior — which might have been good enough for a spot on the overall list had it not been such a huge streaming week, where all 10 titles saw 1B+ viewing minutes.
However, this appears to be the point when Season 6 began to pierce the cultural zeitgeist in a way that Love Island USA had previously been unable to do. According to Nielsen, the series draws half of its audience from the core streaming demo, 18- to 34-year-olds.
It seems that Nielsen doesn’t separate the iterations Love Island in its rankings, meaning that U.S. viewership for the UK series, which launched on June 8 on Hulu (after its June 3 premiere on ITV in the UK), is also included in this tally.
Still, it’s quite clear that Love Island USA is driving this unprecedented audience boost, because the franchise has never seen this level of success in the U.S., despite the popularity of the UK iteration across the pond.
It is likely that this is just the beginning for Love Island, as it could continue to rack up higher viewership as the rest of the season continues. The finale aired on July 21.
Ultimately, Love Island came in at No. 5 on the charts this week with House of the Dragon, Bluey, Suits, and The Boys stacking up above it. This marks the first time the Game of Thrones prequel series has claimed the top spot, but it actually recorded a small 2% audience dip over the previous interval.
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