With the news that this year’s Love Island is planned to go ahead, and with the show potentially moving to a new home in Jersey, OddsMonkey have delved into the stats behind former 187 contestants to find out what makes the perfect applicant.
This year’s series has had over 100,000 applications already, but with only 32 accepted onto the show, so it’s tough competition to gain a spot.
The research analyses age, location, job, hair colour, eye colour and height, to determine what elements will be most likely to land you a spot on the show.
Data shows that most previous islanders have come from Greater London, with 45% of islanders having brown hair.
44% of past contestants showed to have brown eyes, and fashion and sports/fitness make up the most popular professions of past contenders.
Alongside this, we were able to determine which contestants came close to being the ‘perfect islander’ and which don’t fit the typical credentials:
On paper, season four’s Georgia Steel, a student from York with brown hair and green eyes, doesn’t fit many of the top-five characteristics of an islander. However, Georgia lasted a total of 47 days on the show and finished in eighth place.
Jamie Jewitt from season three came close to being the perfect islander. As a model from Essex with brown hair, brown eyes, and standing at 185cm tall, Jamie fits almost all of the criteria to be the perfect islander.
Looking at the presenters, we found that both Iain Stirling and Laura Whitmore have quite a few of the ideal characteristics, and they both have a 61–80% chance of being accepted for the show.
OddsMonkey spokesperson, Peter Watton, had this to say on their findings:
“ITV have announced that Love Island will be back this summer, and there’s no doubt they’ll have an influx of applicants desperate to appear on the show. But, before they fill out the application form, they might be keen to know what their chances are of being accepted. We looked at the key characteristics of past contestants and created our Love Island quiz to tell people what the odds are of being on the show.
“Most of the data we expected to see, such as blonde and brown hair being the most common. It’s also not surprising that most contestants hail from London, and we certainly expected that modelling would be the most common job title for both male and female islanders.“However, it’s interesting to see that some islanders who fit very few of the desirable criteria have still been accepted for the show and have gone very far before being eliminated. In fact, even some of our winners haven’t been ‘the perfect islander’. So, for anyone who wants to apply but doesn’t think they’ll be accepted, it’s definitely worth a try. And, if you’re not sure, you can always take our quiz to find out your chances of making it onto the show — you might be surprised!”
