Reality television faces a bleak future in France after contestants who spent 12 days flirting with the opposite sex on a sun-drenched island won the right to be treated as salaried workers.

In a ground-breaking ruling, the supreme court in France awarded three contestants on the French version of the programme Temptation Island compensation of about €11,000 (£9,500) each. The judges ruled that the trio were entitled to full employment contracts — including overtime, holidays and even damages for wrongful dismissal upon elimination from the show.

The judgment is likely to presage a flood of claims by participants in other programmes, such as the French versions of Big Brother and Britain’s Got Talent. Television executives say the decision, which settles three years of legal wrangling, will add significantly to the cost of producing reality television in France.

The case was brought by Anthony Brocheton, Marie Adamiak and Arno Laize, who said that their participation in l’Ile de la Tentation amounted to a job in terms of French labour laws, which stipulate that no one can be made to work more than 35 hours a week. The programme involves scantily clad men and women testing the faithfulness of competing couples with massages, dances and beach walks on an island off Tulum on the Mexican coast.

Giving judgment, la Cour de Cassation, France’s highest court, said: “Temptation Island constitutes a job and therefore justifies an employment contract.”

It backed a decision by a lower tribunal to award the three contestants €8,176 each in overtime, on the grounds that they had worked for 24 hours a day.

Glem, the French group that makes Temptation Island for the private TF1 channel, was also ordered to pay the contestants €817 for not being given a holiday, €500 for unfair dismissal and €1,500 for the wrongful termination of their contracts. Lawyers said Glem is likely to be ordered to pay the claimants’ legal fees as well.

The supreme court upheld the lower tribunal judgment, which said: “Tempting a person of the opposite sex requires concentration and attention.”

Maître Jérémie Assous, the lawyer for Mr Brocheton, Miss Adamiak and Mr Laize, said: “Production companies will no longer be able to dispose of contestants as they have done for years, 24 hours a day, making them do whatever they want.”

However, the contestants will not be entitled to the €16,000 in damages awarded by the Paris Appeal Court after la Cour de Cassation rejected a suggestion that they had been unregistered black market workers.

A total of 74 candidates from Temptation Island and other French reality TV shows have already launched legal proceedings and look likely to win overtime payments and other compensation as a result of the supreme court judgment.

More than 600 people have taken part in Gallic reality TV shows since they first appeared on French screens in the 1990s. Maître Damien Celice, a lawyer for TF1, had warned the supreme court during the hearing that “there would be no more reality TV in France” if the contestants were given work contracts.

Edouard Boccon-Gibod, the chairman of TF1 Production, sought to downplay that suggestion yesterday, but admitted: “This is a veritable upheaval for the audiovisual industry.”

He said all members of the public participating in French programmes would now have to be offered a work contract. “I cannot bring myself to accept the idea that participating in a television programme is a professional activity.”

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