Australians don’t fall in love with platforms. They fall in love with shows.

By Tina Andrew, Streaming Commercial Director, Nine

For years, the media industry has been consumed by the platform wars, debating tech stacks, interface updates and subscription bundles. But audiences see things much more simply.

According to Deloitte’s Media & Entertainment Consumer Insights 2026 (15th Edition), 66% of Australians form a relationship with the shows they watch, not the streaming platforms hosting them.

That single distinction should fundamentally shift how senior marketers and agency leaders approach entertainment investment. For too long, sponsorship conversations have treated entertainment as mere real estate, a way to buy platform reach and hope for residual brand affinity. But reach only proves someone was in the room. It tells us nothing about how deeply they care, or what they will do next.

Love Island Australia is a masterclass in what show-first loyalty looks like in practice. The audience doesn’t just watch; they invest. They build genuine parasocial relationships with the cast that spill far beyond the 60 minutes on screen. When former Islanders Kale and Tyra recently welcomed their first baby, the public reaction wasn’t detached celebrity gossip; it was an outpouring of genuine, collective celebration. Viewers felt like a couple from their own extended circle had hit a major life milestone.

Such emotional investment fuels the true engine of the format: the space between episodes. The broadcast is just the spark, with the real cultural energy living in the group chats, the TikTok breakdowns, the water-cooler debates and the searches prompted by what someone wore or said the night before. With real-time Digital Out-of-Home (DOOH) extensions now part of the ecosystem, this cultural attention seamlessly follows the audience from sofa, to street, to store.

It is also why the show’s ecosystem keeps expanding. For the first time, “Unseen, Uncut” is running as an after-show on Stan, giving superfans another dedicated destination to obsess and engage beyond the main episodes on 9Now. For sponsors, the opportunity isn’t about interrupting the broadcast, but joining an always-on conversation from the sofa to the street.

Crucially, this depth of connection translates directly into commercial outcomes. According to the Nine/Gemba Sponsorship Analysis 2026, entertainment delivers an average 11% uplift in future action intent, climbing to 19% for Love Island Australia. Intent is not a transaction, but it is clear proof that a culturally embedded audience is primed to act, particularly when a phone is in hand.

Subway showed what that looks like in action. Instead of settling for a badge on a screen, they became part of the villa’s daily rhythm through custom in-show games and synchronised social content. The integration doubled consideration and drove a 186% surge in unprompted awareness, while prompting 61% of viewers to head straight to delivery apps. When a brand respects the relationship between the viewer and the show, the barrier between seeing something and acting on it disappears.

With Love Island Australia building towards its first-ever live finale in Sydney this December, that communal anticipation is at an all-time high. Yet the commercial runway doesn’t vanish when the winners are crowned – the conversation and creator culture carry on well after the season wraps.

If Australians are falling for the content rather than the container, our sponsorship briefs need to reflect that reality. The greatest value of being part of a program isn’t simply being seen while people are watching. It’s earning a place inside the shows they genuinely love and becoming part of what they talk about when the screen turns off.

Source: Gemba Effectiveness Study 2025, Nine Internal Data 2025; Media & Entertainment Consumer Insights 2026 (15th ed.) Deloitte Australia 2026.