Love Island 2018 launched with a record high audience on ITV2 last night.
A huge average audience of 3 million viewers tuned in, giving the channel one of its highest ratings EVER.
The number is up over a million viewers on last year’s launch and 300,000 above 2017’s finale – the previous record high.
The opening peaked with an incredible 3.4 million viewers.
Love Island launch ratings
2015 – 600,000
2016 – 800,000
2017 – 1.3 million
2018 – 3 million
In the opening episode, we met the first five girls to enter the villa. Beauties Samira, Laura, Kendall, Dani and Hayley got to know one another before host Caroline Flack made her entrance.
With the girls waiting in line, the boys walked in one at a time eager to impress and bag themselves a summer soul mate.
But once the first coupling was done, Caroline dropped a twist as she welcomed an extra boy, Adam.
Caroline told the guys: “In 24 hours, he will be coupling up with one of your girls, leaving one of you single and vulnerable. Because you know the rules. To stay on Love Island you have to be in a couple. I’m going to leave you lot to get to know each other.
“Don’t forget in eight weeks time the public will be voting for their favourite couple. That couple could stand to win a massive £50,000 and be crowned the winners of Love Island 2018.”
Love Island continues nightly on ITV2 at 9PM.
Elsewhere in last night’s ratings, it was the soaps that topped the night.
On ITV, Emmerdale had 5.9 million viewers before Coronation Street continued with 7 million.
Karren Brady’s business show Give It A Year returned to 2.6 million a documentary about The Queen’s Coronation held 2.3 million.
On BBC One, 5 million caught EastEnders before just 1.7 million tuned in for Lucy Worsley’s Suffragettes documentary.