The event, which has grown from a one-day sale to a nearly two-week festival, will begin with seven days of pre-sales, allowing consumers on the e-commerce giant's Taobao and Tmall marketplaces to submit deposits to acquire products later at a discounted price.

Pre-sales in recent years have been led by Li Jiaqi and Viya, known as China's livestreaming sales king and queen, who have sold everything from lipstick to rocket launchers on Taobao Live, an Alibaba Group Holding livestreaming channel. Last year, they pre-sold a total of 2.61 billion USD in merchandise on the first day, accounting for around 3.5% of the total event take of 74.4 billion USD. This year, though, there will be no Viya. She has been inactive since December, when she was punished for tax evasion. After disappearing for three months, with netizens believing that one of her livestreams had outraged Chinese censors, Li, also known as Austin, has been missing from Alibaba's Singles Day promotion.

Movement of Alibaba stocks in the last five years. (Source: Trading Economics)

Sources:

https://tradingeconomics.com/baba:us

https://money.usnews.com/investing/news/articles/2022-10-23/a-singles-day-without-livestream-superhosts-leaves-alibaba-in-a-quandary

https://www.reuters.com/business/retail-consumer/singles-day-without-livestream-superhosts-leaves-alibaba-quandary-2022-10-24/

https://www.investing.com/news/stock-market-news/a-singles-day-without-livestream-superhosts-leaves-alibaba-in-a-quandary-2919165