The Bachelor franchise is an influencer launchpad: Contestants want fame and money more than love

The Ringer

In the early days of The Bachelor franchise, participants had to do club appearances and meet-and-greets to strike while the iron was hot and capitalize on their 15 minutes of fame. But thanks to social media, and Instagram in particular, The Bachelor and The Bachelorette contestants have been able to turn their reality fame into big business. "With the help of social media, the Bachelor franchise has become a launchpad for influencers who sell a wide range of lifestyle products, sustain a growing media ecosystem, and function as recurring characters within the show’s extended universe," says Alyssa Bereznak. "The majority of its contestants now function as brand ambassadors, using their exposure on network television to package the show’s saccharine themes of physical fitness, relationships, love, and parenthood into lucrative independent businesses. Sometimes, they also pair off." Bereznak notes that Bachelor and Bachelorette finalists can now rake in more than 1 million followers — "and all the media opportunities and brand collaborations that come with them." In fact, the Instagram influencer industry has seemingly affected the show itself. "Today, the rapid expansion of the influencer marketing industry, and Bachelor Nation’s stronghold in it, has not only complicated the 'right reasons' narrative, it has threatened the basic mechanics of the show," says Bereznak. "The most recent season of The Bachelorette ended in a breakup because its winner, Jed Wyatt, was revealed to have used the show to promote his music career while also maintaining a secret girlfriend." Bereznak adds: "The chance to become an influencer has become the defining not-right reason to go on The Bachelor(ette). This powerful strain of Instagram fame has spread so far and wide that it cannot be ignored, isolated, or cut out in postproduction. And in recent years, the franchise has even launched spinoffs such as Bachelor in Paradise and Winter Games to support a growing secondary market for the nouveau celebrities who became famous because of its program. What was once a sideshow has now become a competing event."

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• Has The Bachelor lost its luster?: As Peter Weber's first episode showed, Bachelor contestants are becoming even more younger and hotter, says Jordan Julian. "It is becoming more and more common for contestants to eschew the lifelong commitment of marriage," she says. "Sometimes, it is the result of unforeseeable drama that makes for better TV than happily-ever-after anyway, as in the most recent season of The Bachelorette when (Hannah) Brown chose Jed Wyatt, only to learn that he had a girlfriend at home the whole time the show was filming. But my sneaking, cynical suspicion for this shift has more to do with the fact that the contestants keep getting younger and hotter, too young and hot to reasonably want to marry someone within months of meeting them on TV."
• ABC reality boss Robert Mills dismisses complaints The Bachelor has become over-produced: "Look, I can’t say that certain things just happen completely by accident," he says. "You’d have to be an idiot to buy that some of these things are just happenstance. So yes, there is a girl and there is an entertainer on one of the dates and she happened to run into him. We don’t go in saying that we’re going to reverse engineer this, but when you find out about these things, you have to take advantage of it because it is great TV. So, I wouldn’t say over-produced, but I would say very well-produced. When you watch it, you will say, 'Wow, that was great TV.'"
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