Brands that want to sponsor the next of TV show ‘Love Island’ will have to submit sealed bids to Virgin Media television by March 22.

Virgin Media Solutions has released a pack of commercial opportunities around the show, including the official sponsorship package. 

VMS head Paula McCarthy said: “Love Island delivers impressive audience numbers every night, not only on linear TV but also on Virgin Media Player, averaging 550,000 views per episode during the last summer series. A phenomenal 12 million streams were delivered on Virgin Media Player.

"The show also has a very strong profile for those hard-to-reach young audiences which makes it a unique and coveted sponsorship property, providing access to scale, reach and that elusive younger demo.”

According to media agency Core, 2020 was a challenging year for TV. Despite strong viewing levels, Core estimates that investment in TV advertising fell by 9.8% last year to €190 million, with spends across both ‘spot’ and sponsorship being affected.

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According to Core: "We continued to see an increase in the share of advertising budgets moving to online video platforms, which is in keeping with the ongoing growth in web-based viewing. In 2020, there was an annual increase in viewing of 10% for ad-funded video platforms. Separately, according to Core Research, 72% of adults say they access Netflix regularly and 23% say they watch Disney+ regularly.

"We believe the TV market will see a recovery in 2021 as brands that were forced to curtail advertising in 2020 return to the medium. We saw this in Q4 last year when spends on TV grew by 20% (versus Q4 2019) leading to record levels of demand. We are forecasting 6.6% growth in TV advertising investment to €203 million in 2021."