From Screen to Store: Exploring the Reality TV to Influencer Pipeline on “Love Island”

This paper examines how Love Island: USA Season 6 integrates e-commerce, brand partnerships, and influencer practices into its narrative structure and digital infrastructure. Focusing on the shop the villa feature of the show’s app, we analyze how the series synchronizes emotional investment with consumer action. Drawing on qualitative content analysis of episodes, a walkthrough study of the app, and thematic analysis of branded social media campaigns, we argue that Love Island extends and accelerates reality television’s longstanding commercial logics through a coordinated media ecosystem that integrates e-commerce, sponsorships, and post-show influencer pathways. While earlier reality formats cultivated marketable personalities and branded selves, Love Island intensifies these practices through platform infrastructures that transform contestants into commercially viable lifestyle brands and encourage audiences to participate through real-time shopping and social engagement. Ultimately, we show that Love Island operationalizes a reality-TV-to-influencer pipeline.