Betting is nothing if not a trend follower. While there might be a handful of events that spring to mind when most people think of betting, the fact is that for pretty much anything that has a big pull and the opportunity to bet on the outcome, you’re going to get odds from at least one betting site. Such has been the case with popular reality show Love Island in recent years.
Introduction
The show is essentially a matchmaking programme in which beautiful young singles spend a summer in a villa in Mallorca and get to know one another, with the ultimate aim of finding love.
The show has been a smash hit. Viewership has grown enormously since the first series. Episodes on series 1 had an average viewership of around 500,000. The viewership peaked in 2019, when over 5 and a half million people on average were watching the show. Popularity has been constant since then, though viewership has fluctuated somewhat. In 2018, it was ITV’s most watched show of all time.
Naturally, this huge popularity has led to a lot of betting on the show, since the outcomes are not known—which, of course, is part of the appeal.
Let’s look at how you can bet on this phenomenon of a show.
How to bet on Love Island
It’s worth taking a quick look at how exactly the show works on a nuts-and-bolts level. What exactly can you bet on in a show like this? Well, there are more than a few things, but the most obvious choice is the winner—Love Island does have a winner, or winning couple.
The format is essentially this. The contestants will pair up on the first day and become a couple. They have the opportunity to switch their partner for someone else, if the other agrees, or they can stay in the couples they are in.
Week to week, couples will be eliminated either if they are not in a couple, or if their fellow contestants vote them out. At the end, the public will then vote for a winning couple who will receive a cash prize of £50,000. Throughout the course of the summer there will be a variety of other games and challenges, too, which the couples need to work together to overcome.
So, as I said, the most obvious way to bet on Love Island is to bet on who is going to win. If you are feeling brave, then you will likely get the most favourable odds if you bet on a couple to win within the first few weeks. Of course, though, you stand a much lower chance of your bet paying off. Many betting sites won’t offer odds at this stage, in any case.
If you wanted to keep up a more regular betting routine, then you should think about betting on who will be eliminated. A way to accumulate on this bet is to predict a few weeks in advance when you think a certain couple will be eliminated. This will give a higher pay out for a higher risk.
You can also bet on individuals, rather than just couples. Top male and top female, for example. You can simply vote on which man or woman you think will win, regardless of their couple status. Couples can change constantly throughout the show, so this is often considered a safer strategy than betting on a couple.
Finally, another popular factor punters like to bet on is who will be the next person to be dumped. As I said, the couples are able to change up week to week, and one person in the couple can dump the other if they aren’t interested any more.
So, we’ve covered the ways you can bet on the show—now let’s look at a comprehensive strategy.
Strategies for betting on Love Island
Follow the show
The first and most important thing, if you’re serious about betting on Love Island, is that you’re going to have to keep up with religiously to give yourself the best chance of success. It’s not like betting on sporting events, where you can simply look at a team or player’s past performance to get a good idea of how well they might do.
Love Island is not only about the whims of the individuals on the show, but the outcomes are essentially decided by public opinion. Not all of them, of course, like the challenge winners. For the most part, though, you’re going to have to be able to keep your finger on the pulse of the show. Keep up with who has good chemistry, and who the viewers like. You could even follow the show on social media to get a good idea of this.
Watch past seasons
While there are only so many hours in the day to watch Love Island, one of the best ways to get a grip on how the show tends to progress is by watching past seasons. You’ll see how the show works, for one thing, but also, you’ll see the kinds of couples that tend to be popular and do well in the game.
If you can stand spoiling it for yourself, something you can do is read up on who won and who got eliminated when before watching the show. You’ll be able to better interpret peoples’ behaviours, and the kinds of outcomes they tend to lead to.
It may sound like extensive research for a reality show, but there’s real money to be won. To date, there are 15 different syndicated versions of the show around the world, too—so there’s no shortage of material.
Patience
While, as I said, there are potentially big winnings to make from guessing the winner in the first week or two, the chances you’ll get it right just aren’t high enough. It’s not something we would really advise.
Patience is the name of the game. Waiting for your moment. The show is not a short event; seasons generally run up to 49 episodes at maximum. You’ve got to be ready to play the long game, and this means waiting at least a few weeks before betting on anything major.
It will be at least 3 or 4 episodes before any clear, potentially lasting dynamics emerge. Wait at least this long to start forming ideas of who might last as a couple.
Strongly liked/disliked individuals
As I mentioned, one of the safer strategies for betting is on individuals rather than couples. Again, especially in the first few weeks, watch the show and pay careful attention to what people are saying about it. In particular, are there any contestants that are much loved, or controversial contestants.
At the beginning, it’s often going to be clearer than at any other point who is going to leave. The first few weeks will weed out the unpopular and controversial islanders, so betting on people to be eliminated in the early stages is often the best strategy.
How to choose a site to bet on Love Island
Obviously, before you do any of this, you’re going to need to decide where to bet on Love Island. There are countless choices, unsurprisingly, and their offers and promotions are going to change year after year, so rather than guiding you to a specific site, let’s just think about how to choose the right site for you.
Novelty betting
In general, what you’re looking for is some kind of novelty or entertainment market. While some of the high street bookies will offer odds on some Love Island markets, overall, you’re likely to get better choice at a novelty market. The market for such betting is larger than you might expect, though exact figures are hard to come by. But there is a popular and lively betting market for other reality shows like Britain’s Got Talent and Strictly Come Dancing. So, there’s no shortage of tailored platforms for this kind of thing.
Mobile presence
That said, not all of them will have a mobile app. While you can generally get access to their ordinary site through your mobile device’s browser, they don’t always work very well. Given the nature of the show, you may well want to be betting along as it’s happening. Mobile betting is the easiest way to do this, so it’s a good idea to look for a platform with a solid mobile app. Odds can change moment to moment if, for instance, a particularly bad fight breaks out, influencing the popularity of a contestant very quickly.
As with any kind of betting, you should also look out for the best bonuses. With traditional bookies, while they might offer more attractive promotions and welcome bonuses, they generally limit which markets you can use the free bets on. Novelty markets will usually offer some kind of bonus or promotion, especially at the start of a new series. Shop around, though, to find the best deals.
How odds work on Love Island Betting
Naturally, no one really knows much about a new series before it airs. The contestants will be announced and briefly introduced, but everything else is kept held back for the debut episode. So, there usually isn’t anything to bet on until the end of the first episode.
Betting sites will determine their odds after the first new episode airs. At that point, you can usually bet on pretty much anything you want. However, keep in mind what I said earlier. These odds will change a lot as the show progresses.
Bookies determine odds in a number of ways. Usually, it’s a combination of mostly the popularity of islanders with other contestants and some public opinion. Well-liked contestants, even if they aren’t in a couple, can often end up staying until the very end.
Though the contestants are not outright celebrities, many of them have some level of social media following already in place. Dani Dyer, daughter of national treasure Danny Dyer, for example, was hugely popular partly because she already had a huge following and won the 2018 series. So, anyone with any pre-existing popularity is likely to be a favourite to win.
Finally, many of the contestants do not join on the first episode. As others leave, more will join over the course of the show. While not a hard and fast rule, they are rarely favourites to win—odds are going to favour those who have been around for longer. But latecomers winning isn’t unknown. The male winner in 2019 only joined at the last possible stage.
