LTK’s new partnership with ‘The Bachelor’ hints at the future of shopping and entertainment tie-ups

The partnership arrives amid a broader boom in entertainment-meets-shopping tie-ups. Amazon has experimented with “shop the show” features for its original content, while Netflix has dipped into live commerce in overseas markets. LTK’s advantage lies in the creator ecosystem it has spent more than a decade building — one that’s increasingly attractive to media companies looking to maintain relevance after the credits roll.

For LTK, which reaches 40 million monthly users and drives over $5 billion in annual sales, the collaboration offers a new blueprint for how entertainment brands can extend audience engagement and revenue after a season ends. It also deepens LTK’s growing role in social commerce, especially as platforms like TikTok face regulatory scrutiny.

“The Bachelor has such an engaged, loyal audience,” said Chris Noonan, creator growth project manager at LTK, who helped develop the partnership. “In that show, there’s so many viral moments around fashion, home and beauty products. It really aligns with us as a company, knowing that nearly 40% of all U.S. millennial and Gen-Z females use our platform.”

The shopping experience kicks off with curated content from past seasons. The Bachelor Nation LTK shop features posts highlighting viral moments from previous episodes — such as date night looks or beachfront fashion in “Bachelor in Paradise” — and links fans directly to purchase options. The LTK shop is discoverable within the app and amplified through official Bachelor Nation social channels. 

That fan-first approach is central to LTK’s strategy. The Dallas-based platform recently relaunched its consumer app with a stronger emphasis on video content, allowing users to discover and watch creators’ content in a more social, interest-based feed, closer to the original spirit of TikTok or Instagram Reels, but optimized for shopping. The company’s shift into video-forward features complements its push into entertainment.

LTK isn’t alone. As TikTok faces a potential ban in the U.S., other social commerce apps like Flip — originally focused on only shoppable videos — have expanded their approach over the past year to include more general entertainment content, not just shopping. Platforms in general, including Substack and LinkedIn, have also added more videos in recent months.

“The Bachelor is video,” said Lindsey Gamble, an influencer marketing expert. “And for LTK, this is part of showing that video is core to their platform, whether it’s content made by creators or content integrated from a show.”

Gamble noted that LTK has typically been bucketed with affiliate marketing tools, but partnerships like this help distinguish it as a full-fledged social commerce ecosystem. “We talk so much about creators as individuals, but media companies are essentially creators, too,” he said. “This signals they can go beyond performance-based marketing and target media brands directly.”

The launch appears to be resonating: Within 24 hours of going live, the Bachelor Nation LTK shop drew more than 4,000 followers, according to Noonan. Though LTK declined to share sales data, it said key metrics of success will include engagement, follower growth and brand partnerships for both Warner Horizon and participating retailers.

The collaboration also opens new doors for brands. With more than 8,000 retailers on the LTK platform — from Nordstrom and Walmart to emerging direct-to-consumer brands— the Bachelor channel gives products an embedded media showcase. “This opens up different types of brand partnership opportunities when we’re talking about entertainment properties,” Noonan said.

For Warner Horizon, the deal offers a way to tap into LTK’s engaged base of Gen-Z and millennial women without building a proprietary e-commerce platform from scratch. “They probably could go and build their own hub somewhere else,” Gamble said. “But LTK has an audience that’s pretty much apples to apples.”

Noonan said LTK is in talks with other entertainment and media properties for similar partnerships, though he declined to share exact names. “We’re talking to a few others,” he said. “This is going to spark a lot of interest in the future.”