Frederik Oldenburg Makes ‘Love Island USA’ Debut To Host Challenge Tied To Telemundo & Peacock’s World Cup Coverage

Frederik Oldenburg made an appearance on Love Island USA Season 8 on Sunday night’s episode to host a game tied to the 2026 World Cup.

The dating series streams on Peacock, home of the FIFA soccer tournament in Spanish via Telemundo. Oldenburg is one of Telemundo Deportes’ broadcasters and is no stranger to narrating reality TV competitions as the host of Exatlón Estados Unidos.

The Islanders joined a soccer-themed challenge hosted by Oldenburg, where they got a little messy as they answered questions about each other. Oldenburg even took his Exatlón whistle to Fiji to mark the start of each bout in the challenge.

Telemundo is scoring big with the 2026 FIFA World Cup and Team USA’s opening game, making it the most-watched telecast ever. The match against Paraguay got 8.9 million viewers on Telemundo, Peacock, and Telemundo streaming platforms, the network reported Saturday, citing Nielsen preliminary fast nationals. The Spanish-language matchup was up +156% versus the U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team’s comparable first-group telecast at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, which was seen by 3.5 million viewers.

Holding the rights of the World Cup through 2030, Telemundo pulled in an average of 2.6 million viewers in 2022. Ahead of the tournament, Joaquín Duro, EVP of sports and head of streaming at NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises, told Deadline they would be using the games as lead-ins on linear and streaming.

“All of the folks that we have watching soccer, we do have ‘next play’ within Peacock, which is another very, very important feature,” Duro said. “And then we can transition those viewers into the next big streaming moment, which will be our reality and scripted series.”