In June 2023, Lionel Messi appeared on Taobao Live ahead of Inter Miami’s China tour. The session drew tens of millions of viewers and drove product sell-outs for sponsored items within minutes. The event became one of the most-discussed celebrity e-commerce moments in China that year.
Messi’s Taobao Live appearance was not an isolated event. It reflects a broader shift in how brands use celebrity partnerships in China’s digital commerce environment. Understanding what happened, why it worked, and what it means for brand strategy gives a practical framework for thinking about celebrity live commerce in China today.
What Is Taobao Live
Taobao Live (淘宝直播) is the live-stream commerce feature built into the Taobao and Tmall apps. Sellers, brands, and celebrities broadcast in real-time to an audience that can browse products, ask questions, and purchase without leaving the stream. Products appear in an overlay shopping cart that viewers can tap directly.
Taobao Live launched in 2016 and grew steadily until 2020-2021, when the COVID lockdowns made live commerce the dominant format for product discovery in China. By 2023, Taobao Live was generating over 500 billion RMB in annual GMV, with a user base of hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers.
The format works differently from YouTube or Instagram Live because the purchase intent is built in. Chinese consumers who open Taobao Live are in a shopping mindset. The sessions that work best combine entertainment and genuine product information. Hosts who demo products, answer real questions, and create limited-time offers (“only 500 units at this price, then it goes back to standard retail”) drive conversion rates far above standard e-commerce product pages.
Messi’s Taobao Live Appearance: What Happened
The June 2023 Taobao Live session featuring Messi was organized by Alibaba in partnership with Messi’s management ahead of Inter Miami’s Asian tour. The session combined:
- A direct video appearance by Messi (brief, in English, with Chinese subtitles)
- Alibaba-sponsored products including limited-edition merchandise, sportswear, and partner brand items
- Chinese celebrity co-hosts who provided the main commentary and product presentation
- Real-time Q&A from the audience, with some questions forwarded to Messi
The viewership figures released publicly indicated tens of millions of viewers during the peak broadcast window. Specific sponsored products sold out in the first minutes of being featured. The event generated widespread news coverage in China’s sports and business media, extending the reach far beyond the live audience.
Why Celebrity Live Commerce Works in China
Trust Transfer from Celebrity to Product
Chinese consumers respond to celebrity product endorsement differently from Western markets. In China, the celebrity’s appearance on a live-stream session signals a level of personal endorsement that goes beyond standard advertising. The consumer logic: if a celebrity is spending hours on a live session talking about products, they are not just lending their image. They are implicitly recommending. This trust transfer is stronger in live format than in static advertising.
This is why Chinese celebrities command premium fees for live-stream commerce versus static ad campaigns — the conversion impact per viewer is meaningfully higher.
FOMO and Urgency Mechanics
Taobao Live sessions for celebrity events create classic fear-of-missing-out dynamics. Limited units, countdown timers, and comments showing “product X is sold out” all signal that inaction has a cost. Chinese consumers who have watched Taobao Live sessions are familiar with these mechanics and respond to them — but only when the product and celebrity combination generates genuine interest.
Sports and Global Stars Have Unique Appeal
Messi is not a Chinese celebrity. He cannot speak Mandarin and his product knowledge is minimal. Yet the session worked because his status as the world’s most recognized footballer translates into genuine aspiration in China’s sports consumer demographic. The Chinese middle class watches European football intensely. For the demographic that has followed Messi’s career at Barcelona and PSG, seeing him in a Taobao Live context creates a novelty that domestic celebrity appearances cannot replicate.
The same pattern applies to other global sports figures who have appeared in Chinese e-commerce contexts: NBA players, F1 drivers, and international entertainment celebrities who have genuine Chinese fan bases all generate above-average live session metrics when their appearances are structured correctly.
Celebrity Live Commerce in 2025: The Current Landscape
The celebrity live commerce category has evolved significantly since the Messi appearance. Key developments from 2023 to 2025:
The Concentration Problem
Through 2022, a handful of mega-influencers (notably Li Jiaqi and Viya) captured the majority of live commerce GMV in China. Brands competed to partner with these top-tier hosts, paying commissions of 20-30% plus large appearance fees. When Viya was fined 1.3 billion RMB for tax evasion in 2021 and essentially disappeared from the platform, and when Li Jiaqi faced a major boycott in September 2023 after an incident involving a product comment, brands that had concentrated all their live commerce investment in these top names found themselves exposed.
This has accelerated a structural shift: brands are now investing in diverse host portfolios rather than single top-tier relationships.
Platform Diversification
In 2023-2024, Douyin’s live commerce GMV surpassed Taobao Live’s in several product categories. Kuaishou maintains strong live commerce volumes in lower-tier cities and value-oriented categories. For brands planning celebrity live commerce in 2025, the question is not just which celebrity but which platform the target audience uses most. A sports brand targeting 18-30 year old males should consider Douyin; a premium skincare brand targeting 30-45 year old women might achieve better returns on Taobao Live where that demographic’s purchase intent is higher.
Brand-Owned Live Commerce vs. External Hosts
Many brands that began their China live commerce strategy through external celebrities and KOLs have now built their own brand-owned live commerce operations. Brands like Perfect Diary, Proya, and international players including L’Oreal China run daily own-brand live sessions with in-house trained hosts. The cost structure is fundamentally different from external celebrity sessions: lower per-session cost, no commission on GMV, full control over product messaging, and accumulating audience loyalty over time.
For more on building live commerce operations in China, see EAC’s guide to community and live commerce management and our Tmall services.
How to Structure a Celebrity Live Commerce Partnership
For brands evaluating a celebrity live commerce collaboration in China, the key decisions:
- Match the celebrity’s fan base to your consumer target: A sports celebrity’s audience skews young and male. A beauty and lifestyle celebrity’s audience skews female and 25-40. A mismatch between the celebrity’s audience composition and your target consumer produces poor conversion regardless of the celebrity’s overall popularity.
- Define the session structure clearly: Will the celebrity be live throughout the session or for a defined segment? Who are the co-hosts managing the actual product presentation? What are the GMV targets and how does compensation structure (flat fee vs. commission) align with those targets?
- Invest in pre-session promotion: The Messi session worked partly because of the large media build-up. Celebrity live sessions without pre-promotion achieve a fraction of the viewership of sessions that build anticipation for 7-10 days in advance through social media content, brand newsletters, and Xiaohongshu.
- Have the inventory and logistics ready: Selling out in 10 minutes is a success story only if you have a restock plan and can communicate it to the audience. Brands that experience sell-outs without a restock pathway lose the momentum the session built.
FAQ: Celebrity Live Commerce in China
How much does it cost to bring an international celebrity onto Taobao Live?
Appearance fees for international celebrities in Chinese live commerce vary widely and are almost never publicly disclosed. Publicly reported estimates for top-tier global stars (Messi-level) range from $500,000 to several million USD for a single session, plus merchandise or GMV commission arrangements. For mid-tier international celebrities with genuine Chinese fan bases, appearance fees for live commerce are typically in the range of $50,000 to $300,000 depending on session length and platform. The more commercially relevant figure is the ROI calculation: a $200,000 appearance fee is inexpensive if the session generates 50 million RMB in GMV with 20% gross margin, and expensive if it generates 3 million RMB in GMV. The fundamental question is whether the celebrity’s specific Chinese fan base is large enough and concentrated in your product category’s consumer profile to generate the session volume that justifies the fee. Brands that have run these calculations consistently report that mid-tier international celebrities with genuine Chinese fan bases (not just global fame but specific China popularity) deliver better ROI than maximum-fame celebrities with shallow China connections.
Source: MCN industry reports on live commerce appearance fee ranges (2024); Alibaba Taobao Live case study documentation; China Daily celebrity e-commerce coverage (2023-2024)
Is Taobao Live still growing, or has Douyin taken over?
Both platforms are growing, but in different directions. Taobao Live has the highest purchase-intent audience — viewers are already on the Taobao/Tmall shopping apps and are actively browsing. Conversion rates from viewer to buyer are higher on Taobao Live than on Douyin. Douyin has a larger total audience and the content discovery algorithm can surface live sessions to users who were not specifically looking to buy — which makes it excellent for brand awareness and new customer acquisition. The practical answer for most brands: Taobao Live is better for converting existing brand consideration into purchase, Douyin Live is better for reaching new audiences. Brands with mature China e-commerce operations typically run on both, allocating budget based on campaign objective. For celebrity partnership sessions specifically, the choice depends on where the celebrity’s Chinese fan base is most active — younger sports and entertainment fans skew Douyin, premium lifestyle and beauty audiences skew Taobao Live.
Source: QuestMobile China Live Commerce Platform Report Q4 2024; iResearch China E-Commerce Live Streaming Market Analysis 2024
Interested in building a live commerce strategy for your brand in China? Get a free audit from our team. For more on platform choice, see EAC’s guide to Douyin and our guide to selling on Taobao.
Harry Huang, E-Commerce Performance Manager at EAC Ecommerce China Agency. Harry’s job is simple: make your China store profitable, fast. He runs platform accounts on Tmall, JD, and Douyin with one metric in mind — revenue per RMB spent. No wasted cycles, no bloated retainers.
His approach is diagnostic. He identifies the exact conversion blockers — pricing, listing copy, promotion timing, traffic mix — fixes them in order of impact, and moves to the next lever. Brands working with Harry typically see their first measurable ROI improvement within 30 days.
Harry has managed accounts across health, beauty, consumer tech, and lifestyle categories. He thinks in dashboards, acts on data, and delivers results ahead of schedule. If you need execution with accountability, Harry is who you call.
Ready to improve your China e-commerce ROI? Get a free audit from our team.
Connect with Harry Huang: ecommercechinaagency.com/author/philip/
