Tube Trends: Summer House Scandal Spurs Social Spike For Show
In what’s become an annual tradition in recent years, the Bravo universe has birthed yet another “scandal” between cast members of its younger-skewing reality shows.
Following in the footsteps of Scandoval, Lindsay and Carl’s breakup and Craig and Paige’s breakup, we now have “Scamanda.”
Coming just months after Summer House co-stars (and husband and wife) Amanda Batula and Kyle Cooke announced their separation, Batula and fellow Summer House castmate West Wilson confirmed their own relationship. The resulting scandal has the cast torn apart just weeks before the season 10 reunion show is set to film. And it has fans obsessing around the details, and the possible early signs ths was happening.
And where else would that happen, of course, but social video?
Social Sleuthing
Across all platforms, Summer House has generated 12.7K video uploads and over 354 million views since season 10 started on Feb. 3 — according to Tubular Labs. But over 100 million of those views have come in the days since Batula and Wilson’s Mar. 31 announcement.
Even more importantly, the conversation is largely being generated not by Bravo or other media outlets. But rather, by fans of the long-running program — a testament to the popularity of Summer House and the community and engagement Bravo has been able to cultivate around it.
Since Mar. 31, 65.4% of social video views around Summer House have come from individual users either providing reactions to the news or looking back at moments from various episodes to try and find hints of the eventual scandal. Many of those videos are indeed user-generated content. But one surprising driver of the conversation? Kyle Cooke.
(Kyle Cooke’s monthly Instagram video views, April 1, 2025-present, via Tubular Labs)
Cooke’s Social Video Success
Even before the “Scamanda” news broke, Cooke — who is also the founder of sparkling hard tea/canned cocktail brand Loverboy — had a relatively active social video presence, primarily on Instagram.
Since April 1, Tubular highlights Cooke has generated over 25 million views on 66 uploads. However, March was his biggest month to-date at over 4.9 million views, and just three days into April 2025, Cooke already has over 2 million views and it’s his most engaging month of content since May 2025.
With fans clamoring for any information they can find around the situation, Kyle has been providing updates on his castmates (largely without bashing them or his wife) and conducting short interviews to individual creators about it all, too.
Cooke is not without controversy himself, of course. But at least thus far throughout the aftermath of this Amanda/West announcement, he’s looked to maintain what’s at least the appearance of a cool head. The result could help his brand, but also help generate a wider following on social video to help fuel that as an additional revenue source (either for Loverboy or himself).
Network Opportunities
Admittedly, the scandal may not be a long-term benefit for Bravo given the number of cast members impacted. Along with Batula, Wilson and Cooke, the situation also impacts Ciara Miller, who was reportedly “seeing” Wilson again early this year after they split up a couple years ago.
Miller has unfollowed both Wilson and Batula (a close friend of hers) on social media, and there is no guarantee they can all coexist in the same house for a summer anymore.
Bravo saw something similar happen in the wake of Scandoval, which tore apart the cast of Vanderpump Rules. And after one season in its wake, the decade-long show was completely rebooted with a new cast — largely because the cast (many of whom were part of the original cast or added shortly thereafter) were barely speaking to one another.
The same could apply here for Summer House, which is wrapping up its 10th season and is one of Bravo’s most successful current shows on TV.
After already the departures of core cast members Lindsay Hubbard and Paige DeSorbo in the last couple years, losing two or more of Kyle, Amanda, West or Ciara couple thoroughly cripple fan interest.
With that in mind, Bravo can still do a lot more with “Scamanda” content on social video than it has so far.
Across platforms, Bravo and Andy Cohen-hosted Watch What Happens Live have only posted 14 videos about Summer House since Mar. 31, amounting to about 12 million views. While not completely avoiding the incident, there’s also a significant runway for the network to capitalize on the engagement themselves, much as they did during Scandoval.
Back then, in Mar. 2023, Bravo published 80 videos across platforms over the span of the full month. Notably, however, those videos generated about 14-15 million views; not a dissimilar number to what we’re seeing here, on fewer uploads.
There’s much more to come around the news. So the network may just be ramping up their content with episodes left to air and the season finale still sitting in the future.
