Christina Haack faces mixed reactions to a new brand promo during a busy HGTV cycle

Christina Haack is used to juggling renovation deadlines, network expectations, and a vocal fan base, but her latest champagne campaign has pushed that balancing act into a new kind of spotlight. As you watch her navigate a provocative brand promo at the same time her HGTV slate is in flux, you are seeing a real-time test of how far a home-improvement star can stretch her image without losing the audience that built her career.

The reaction to her “spicy” photos with boyfriend Chris Larocca is not happening in a vacuum, it is colliding with a year of cancellations, new projects, and personal upheaval that already had viewers reassessing what they expect from Christina Haack on and off screen.

The “spicy” champagne moment that lit up her fan base

You first feel the tension in the images themselves, where Christina Haack and her boyfriend Chris Larocca lean into a sultry aesthetic to promote her new champagne brand. The shoot is framed as a “spicy” celebration of their relationship, with Christina Haack and Chris Larocca posed in intimate, heat-of-the-moment style that is a sharp departure from the neutral kitchens and open-concept living rooms you are used to seeing from her on HGTV, a shift that is underscored in coverage that flags the promo as a bold, NEED TO KNOW move for the couple in the middle of a busy career cycle for Christina Haack and Chris Larocca.

Once the photos hit social media, the backlash arrived quickly, with some viewers zeroing in on the sexual tone and urging her to “Think of Your Kids” as they reacted to Christina Haack’s decision to front a “Spicy” Champagne Ad with Boyfriend Chris Larocca Sparks Fan Backlash that many felt clashed with her image as a mother and HGTV personality, criticism that framed the campaign as a misstep rather than a savvy brand extension for Christina Haack.

From “provocative” to “raunchy,” how criticism escalated online

As you scroll through reactions, you see the language around the campaign harden, with some coverage describing how HGTV Star Christina Haack Sparks Bitter Backlash After Posing for Provocative Champagne Ad With Boyfriend Christopher, a framing that casts the photos as a deliberate push into edgier territory rather than a one-off romantic shoot, and that criticism often folds in her HGTV identity, suggesting that a home-renovation host should adhere to a narrower standard of being a “role model” for family audiences who discovered her through HGTV.

The debate intensified when a separate report highlighted that the Instagram post promoting the champagne drew 480 comments, a figure that signals how quickly the conversation around the ad turned into a referendum on her personal choices, with detractors labeling it a raunchy new post with boyfriend Chris Larocca and questioning whether the tone was appropriate for someone whose brand has long been built on aspirational but family-friendly design, a clash that is captured in coverage of the 480 comments responding to the post with boyfriend Chris Larocca.

Inside the Instagram flashpoint and the fan divide

When you look directly at the Instagram post, the split in her audience becomes even clearer, because Christina Haack has sparked major online debate after posting a steamy champagne ad featuring her boyfriend, Chris Lar, and the comment section reads like a focus group on what viewers will tolerate from a reality star who has grown up on their screens, with some praising the confidence and others accusing her of chasing shock value in a way that undercuts the relatability that made her a staple of HGTV in the first place, a divide that is visible in the way Christina Haack and Chris Lar trend together.

For you as a viewer, the reaction is a reminder that social media has become the real-time scoreboard for celebrity branding, and in Christina Haack’s case, every new post is now read against a backdrop of career shifts and personal headlines, which means a champagne ad is never just a champagne ad, it is a statement about how she wants to be seen after a year of professional resets and a public divorce, and the intensity of the online debate shows how invested her followers remain in policing that image.

A packed HGTV chapter: cancellations, renewals, and new teases

Part of why this promo hits differently is that it lands while her television portfolio is in transition, with Christina Haack still closely associated with HGTV even after a shake-up that saw key series end, and you can trace that shift back to when Jul reporting noted that After Christina Haack and Tarek El Moussa’s HGTV shows, Christina, Coast and Flipping El Moussa were canceled, a moment that forced her to recalibrate what her on-screen future would look like without the long-running franchises that introduced her to viewers alongside Tarek El Moussa and later in her own spin-off anchored on the California coast for HGTV.

At the same time, she has been building a new chapter with The Flip Off, a competition-style series that quickly became central to her HGTV identity, and by Sep coverage confirmed that The Flip Off had been greenlit for a second season after drawing an audience of 628,000 viewers and commanding budgets upward of $500,000 per episode, the news that Christina Haack Reveals The Flip Off Season 2 Filming Has begun signaled that she was still a bankable presence for the network and that you could expect to see her leading high-stakes renovation battles even as her personal life and side ventures, including the champagne brand, generated their own headlines around The Flip Off.

Fans want more TV even as she leans into lifestyle branding

While the champagne promo dominates your feed, a different corner of her audience is focused on whether she will return with yet another series, and that appetite surfaced when she teased a “special” new project and fans flooded her comments with pleas like “Please let it be a new show!!!” and “Im praying it’s a showwwwww i need christina back on my screen!”, a reaction that underscores how, for many viewers, the ideal version of Christina Haack is still the one walking you through tile choices and budget breakdowns rather than posing in lingerie with a glass of bubbly, a tension that sits at the heart of coverage where fans respond to her tease by writing Please let it be a new show and hoping she went for it after a tough year that also included Battle on the Beach for Please.

That hunger for more episodes sits alongside a growing recognition that she is building a broader lifestyle brand, from real estate and design to beverages, and the champagne ad is part of that expansion, but as you weigh the mixed reactions, it is clear that some fans are more comfortable with Christina Haack as a tireless renovator than as a glamour-forward influencer, which is why every new venture is judged not only on its own merits but on whether it brings her closer to or further from the version of herself that viewers first invited into their living rooms.

Personal turbulence and a sharpened public voice

The champagne controversy also lands after a year in which Christina Haack has been unusually candid about the emotional toll of her personal life, including the end of her marriage to Josh Hall, and that context matters when you interpret how she is choosing to present herself now, because by Sep reporting noted that The HGTV star, 42, took a moment to reflect on the highs and lows of 2025 in an Instagram post that doubled as a cryptic warning to the “multiple” people who wanted to play games with her, a message that suggested she was done prioritizing other people’s expectations and no longer cared about “nonsense” in the same way, a stance that helps explain why a 42-year-old HGTV veteran might feel emboldened to post a steamy champagne campaign despite knowing it would spark debate on The HGTV.

For you, that sharper tone is part of a broader pattern in which Christina Haack uses Instagram not just as a marketing tool but as a place to draw boundaries with exes, critics, and even network decisions, and it feeds into the sense that the champagne ad is less a miscalculation and more a deliberate statement that she will define her own image, even if that means alienating some viewers who still see her primarily as the young cohost from her early days with Tarek El Moussa.

How long-time viewers are renegotiating their relationship with her

If you dip into fan spaces, you can see that renegotiation happening in real time, with threads dissecting everything from her on-screen partnerships to her off-screen branding, and one example comes from r/HGTV, where a post titled Christina Haack Reveals Ex Tarek El Moussa Made the rounds in a community feed that also surfaces items labeled More posts you may like and Back Again, alongside crossposts from r/ShulisAnonymous about an Ousted TSN employee, a reminder that Christina Haack’s name now circulates in the same online ecosystems that trade in broader media gossip and that her choices, including the champagne promo, are being parsed by HGTV diehards who remember every phase of her career and are not shy about saying when they think she has gone too far on More.

For you as a viewer, that means engaging with Christina Haack today involves more than tuning into a renovation marathon, it requires deciding how comfortable you are with a star who is simultaneously a contractor, a reality competitor, a champagne entrepreneur, and a woman in her forties asserting control over her image, and the mixed reactions to her latest promo suggest that while some fans are eager to follow her into that more unfiltered era, others would prefer she keep the “spicy” moments off-camera and stick to the shiplap.

Why the champagne backlash may not slow her down

Even with the criticism, the sheer volume of attention around the champagne campaign hints at why Christina Haack is unlikely to retreat from this kind of branding, because the same images that drew complaints also kept her trending and ensured that her new beverage line, which she developed with Christopher Larocca for Clé Cachée, reached an audience far beyond traditional HGTV viewers, a level of visibility that is highlighted in coverage describing how NEED and KNOW details of the collaboration between Christina Haack and Christopher Larocca for Clé Cachée have become part of the broader conversation about her evolving business portfolio on Christina Haack and.

As you weigh whether the promo crossed a line, it is worth noting that Christina Haack has built her career on taking calculated risks, from leaving a hit series to front her own show to embracing competition formats like The Flip Off, and the champagne ad looks like another bet that the audience she has cultivated over more than a decade will ultimately accept a more multidimensional version of her, even if that means weathering a few rounds of backlash every time she decides to turn up the heat.