(Yicai Global) March 22 -- Television Broadcasts, a Hong Kong-based operator of five free-to-air channels which expanded its loss last year, is confident about its new business of producing live-streaming retail content, according to an executive.

"In terms of the e-commerce live-streaming, we are a late entrant, but we are confident that through the content plus live-streaming model to empower e-commerce we can bring more high-quality and low-cost products to users," Peng Mingye, president of Television Broadcasts China, a subsidiary of TVB, said in an exclusive interview with Yicai Global recently. TVB announced on March 20 that its second Taobao live-streaming event will be held on March 30.

The operator of TVB Pearl and TVB Jade expects to arrange at least 48 Taobao live-streaming events this year after teaming with the platform owned by Alibaba Group Holding earlier this month, sending the broadcaster's share price to a more than four-year high on March 9.

TVB has been exploring the new trend of e-commerce since last year. In the second half of 2022, TVB started selling goods via three live-streaming accounts on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. Douyin audiences have a higher acceptance of short videos, so the company has released many creative videos that feature television celebrities and other TVB concepts, according to Peng.

Taobao has deep e-commerce experience so TVB aims to widen the cooperation on content and live-streaming through Taobao's advantages in products and TVB’s emphasis on content, Peng said, adding that the results of the first immersive Hong Kong TV drama-style event were fairly remarkable.

The first Taobao event gained sales of over CNY23.5 million (USD3.4 million) in six hours. The total number of viewers exceeded 3.2 million with a real-time peak of more than 30,000. The topic became viral on other social media platforms as Hong Kong actor Moses Chan and actress Sharon Chan participated in the show.

Editors: Shi Yi, Emmi Laine, Xiao Yi