TikTok counts 21,000 agencies behind its creators
TikTok has put a number on the agency layer that has grown up around its live streaming business. The company says more than 21,000 TikTok LIVE Creator Networks now support 4.7 million creators worldwide, up from 2.4 million a year earlier, and that more than 240 million creators went live on TikTok during 2025.
For anyone in Europe planning live commerce, this is the most useful thing TikTok has published in a while, and not for the reason it was announced. The figures say that live selling at scale is not a content activity run by a marketing team. It runs through an organised layer of talent businesses, most of them outside Europe, and that layer is where hosts come from.
What a Creator Network is
The term is TikTok’s and it needs unpacking, because the obvious reading is wrong. A Creator Network is not part of TikTok. They are independent third-party businesses, described by the company as operating as training hubs, business incubators and partners for creators, helping with areas such as production, digital storytelling and creator development.
In practice that is a talent agency crossed with a small production company. It recruits streamers, trains them, gives them coaching and feedback, helps with the technical side of broadcasting, and advises on making money. The analogy for a marketplace seller is exact: this is the same agency layer that grew up around Amazon selling, arriving around live commerce, and arriving fast.
The figures were announced on 15 September at TikTok’s first Creator Networks Global Summit, at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Center in Bangkok. Claire Li, TikTok’s head of LIVE Creator Networks, product and strategy, presented the professionalisation of the layer as the point of the event, and the company introduced LIVE Bax, an artificial intelligence assistant for network operators built into its LIVE Backstage tool.
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The geography, which is the part Europe should read
The distribution is uneven and the direction of the imbalance matters if you are hiring hosts.
Southeast Asia accounts for about a quarter of the networks and around a third of the creators they support, so networks there are larger on average than networks elsewhere. On figures carried by a single outlet, Tech Edition, the Middle East and Turkiye hold about 20 percent of supported creators and Europe holds about 15 percent, with Europe the fastest expanding of the named regions at 2.7 times year on year.
Read plainly: Europe is the smallest of the three named regions and the fastest growing. The infrastructure for live selling exists here, it is thinner than in Asia, and it is being built out now. A European brand that decides in 2027 to take live commerce seriously will be recruiting from a supply that its competitors will already have contracted.
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The concentration figure, and how to read it
The most striking claim of the announcement comes from one outlet only, and that outlet names no source for it. Tech Edition prints, as platform data, that network-managed creators are around 2 percent of the creator population on TikTok LIVE and generate 36 percent of all gifting revenue on the platform, with no report, spokesperson or presentation cited for either figure. The same report has managed creators broadcasting 20 percent more frequently across 2025 and logging twice as many streaming hours on average.
Three cautions, and they are not small.
The first is what the number is a share of. The 2 percent reconciles against the separately announced totals: 4.7 million network-supported creators against 240 million who went live in 2025. The 36 percent does not have a published total underneath it. TikTok has given no absolute figure for gifting revenue, so the share cannot be converted into money, and it is not clear whether gifting revenue means the gross value of gifts bought, the portion passed to creators, or the portion TikTok keeps. Those are three very different numbers.
The second is causation. Networks recruit; they do not draw at random. A network signs the streamer who is already pulling an audience, which means a large part of the gap between managed and unmanaged earnings is selection rather than coaching. The higher broadcast frequency and streaming hours are a genuine mechanism, and they are also exactly what you would expect of people who were already the most committed streamers before anyone signed them. The figures do not show that joining a network causes higher earnings.
The third is that this is gifting, not commerce. Gifting revenue is viewers sending virtual gifts, which is a different business from TikTok Shop sales. Nothing in these figures says anything about how much product the managed creators sell.
What the counting unit is
The 240 million figure is a reach measurement and should be read as one. It counts creators who went live at least once during 2025, so somebody who opened a single stream, got twelve viewers and never returned is counted on the same terms as somebody broadcasting four hours a night.
The company describes it as almost double the 2024 number but has never printed the 2024 number, so no growth rate can honestly be derived from it. Anyone quoting “TikTok live streaming grew 100 percent” is inventing a base.
Set the numbers against each other and the realistic shape appears: a very large casual base, a professionalised core of a few million receiving some kind of support, and revenue concentrated inside that core. There is also no published definition of what qualifies as a Creator Network, so the count of 21,000 treats a one-person agency and a several-hundred-person operation identically, and part of a near-tripling could reflect a broadening definition rather than new businesses.
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Why a seller should care about an agency layer
Because live commerce is a staffing decision dressed up as a content decision, and the existence of 21,000 intermediaries is the evidence.
Brands keep approaching live selling as something the social team can add to its week. The economics do not work that way. A live that sells needs a host who can hold an audience for hours, a producer, a set, a schedule people can rely on, and enough volume of hours to learn anything. That is a payroll, and the reason an agency layer exists is that most brands cannot build it and most talented streamers cannot sell themselves.
So the practical question for a European operator is not whether to try live selling. It is whether you are buying hosts, building them, or borrowing them from a network, and what each of those costs. The published figures give you one hard fact to plan against: that supply is organised, it is concentrated outside Europe, and the European share of it is small and growing quickly.
What to do this week
Decide which of the three routes you are on. Build in house, contract a network, or work with individual creators directly. They have different cost structures and different failure modes, and drifting between them is how live commerce budgets get spent without producing anything.
If a network approaches you, ask for its own numbers. How many creators it manages, in your market, in your category, and what they sell rather than what they earn in gifts. A network unwilling to answer the third question is selling you audience, not revenue.
Do not use these figures in a business case. They are a platform’s self-report about a market it hosts and profits from, with no published method, and they measure gifting. If you need a number for a live commerce forecast, it has to come from sales data in your own category.
Watch the European share. Fifteen percent and growing fast is the number to recheck next year, because it is the one that determines whether host supply is a constraint on your plans or not.
The three-line version
If you run the social or live channel. Decide which of the three host-supply routes you are on, build, contract or work with creators directly, before any money is committed to a format.
If you have just taken on live commerce. It is a staffing line rather than a content line, and the supply you would be hiring from is organised, concentrated outside Europe, and being contracted now.
If you sign the budget. Refuse a forecast built on these figures. They are a platform’s own unaudited count of its own ecosystem, and they measure gifting rather than sales.
Sources
Tech Edition, TikTok LIVE says 21,000 Creator Networks support 4.7 million creators globally: https://www.techedt.com/tiktok-live-says-21000-creator-networks-support-4-7-million-creators-globally
Tech Edition, TikTok LIVE puts Creator Networks at the centre of its livestreaming expansion: https://www.techedt.com/tiktok-live-puts-creator-networks-at-the-centre-of-its-livestreaming-expansion
Philippine Daily Inquirer, the business behind TikTok livestreaming: https://business.inquirer.net/611963/the-business-behind-tiktok-livestreaming
The Rakyat Post, going live is easy, making money from it is not: https://www.therakyatpost.com/news/2026/09/18/going-live-is-easy-making-money-from-it-is-not-tiktok-introduce-creator-networks/