<p>Manufacturers often distribute products through sales formats (reselling or agency selling) provided by retailers in e-commerce channels. To improve product sales and consumer shopping experiences, the manufacturer or the retailer is increasingly adopting live-streaming as a sales strategy. Therefore, this paper develops a game-theoretic model incorporating different sales formats to explore the interaction between sales formats and live-streaming selling, focusing on the streamer’s sales ability. We first find that higher streamer’s sales abilities, whether for reselling or agency selling, do not necessarily improve manufacturer’s profitability unless the streamer’s unit sales commission is lower. Second, in reselling, the retailer introduces live-streaming channels if the streamer’s sales ability and the streamer’s unit sales commission are low. However, in agency selling, the retailer introduces live-streaming channels only when the streamer’s sales ability is low. Third, counterintuitively, the manufacturer prefers reselling under higher retailer’s commission rates if the manufacturer launches live-streaming channels.</p>