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New gambling rules end randomized card breaks on TikTok. September 29, 2026 TikTok restricts randomized card breaks on its platform. TikTok Shop has recently implemented stricter regulations concerning gambling and randomized sales, specifically targeting how trading card breaks operate within the United States. Changes to random team breaks and TikTok's Gambling Policy. Since May, TikTok has updated its Gambling Policy multiple times. Under the new guidelines, random team breaks are only allowed through TikTok Shop's Surprise Sets feature, using TikTok's own randomization software. This contrasts with previous practices where card breaks - which involve opening sealed trading card packs during livestreams and distributing contents to buyers - could assign teams or categories randomly without standardized tools. The May policy removal banned random card breaks, draft-style formats, and bounty breaks, while a June update expanded restrictions to additional formats such as pull games and King of the Hill challenges. The August 31 revision permits eligible sellers to conduct random team breaks solely within Surprise Sets and mandates all random draws to be performed through TikTok's official system, prohibiting any manual or external selection methods. Additionally, raffling off unsold break spots is no longer permitted. Blind box promotions can only feature products originally manufactured as blind boxes by brands acknowledged by TikTok. Not all break types are banned; sellers who meet specific Shop Performance Score criteria may still host personal breaks, pick-your-team breaks, pull-until-you-win breaks, and case breaks, provided products are sealed before the stream and physically shipped to customers post-purchase. Updates to Surprise set guidelines amid gambling regulations. The platform also forbids gambling activities such as raffles, sweepstakes, wagers, and lucky wheels on its Shop service, where buyers pay for chances to win random prizes. TikTok's Surprise Sets extend beyond trading cards, offering categories like electronics, beauty products, toys, and fashion accessories. Previously, the policy set numerical limits on price variation within these sets and required a minimum proportion of higher-value items to ensure transparency of value. However, in September, those numerical thresholds were removed. The current rules instead emphasize fair price distribution and prevent scenarios where expensive items are excessively rare. Sellers must clearly disclose the potential items and quantities featured in Surprise Sets and present available products during livestreams. TikTok reviews these listings to guarantee compliance. Legal challenges and industry impact. These policy updates come amid ongoing legal scrutiny surrounding card breaks. Multiple lawsuits involving TikTok, Fanatics, Whatnot, and Fanatics Live question the legality of certain card break formats, alleging issues related to competition laws, gambling regulations, and lottery-style operations. In California, three break sellers have brought antitrust and unfair competition lawsuits against TikTok and Fanatics. Meanwhile, Whatnot faces legal claims accusing some of its break formats of operating as unlicensed gambling activities.

Autumn Fair partners with Whatnot. Partnership will offer retailers and brands and brands the opportunity to discover a new way to sell, see live shopping in action and have a go themselves at The Clubhouse. Autumn Fair is partnering with Whatnot, the live commerce platform, to give retailers and brands the chance to discover a new way to sell, connect with customers and build online communities, with a dedicated Whatnot experience at the buyer's lounge, The Clubhouse, in Hall 9 throughout the show. Whatnot is the largest live commerce platform in the UK, U.S. and Europe, where businesses showcase products, share their expertise and connect with buyers in real time across hundreds of categories. Through live shows, sellers can answer questions, build relationships with their communities and grow their businesses, bringing the trust and interaction of shopping in person to the online world. The Whatnot experience provides an opportunity to see live commerce in action, meet the experts behind the platform and explore how live selling can help reach new audiences, move more stock and create an additional sales channel. Live commerce is scaling rapidly, with Whatnot holding nearly 60% market share across its markets. The UK is its most established European market and its second largest globally, with sales up 281% year on year. The number of UK sellers has grown by 360% over the past year, while first-time buyers have increased by 374%. During Autumn Fair, Whatnot will create a live commerce studio for visitors to experience live commerce in-person with Whatnot sellers going live from the space, showcasing products and sharing their expertise with audiences in real time. Visitors can drop into The Clubhouse to watch experienced sellers run live shows, see how products are presented and sold, meet the Whatnot team and find out how to get started themselves. The activation is designed to make live commerce accessible and practical, giving retailers and brands the opportunity to see exactly how the platform works rather than simply hearing about the concept. Matthew Mein, Event Director at Autumn Fair & Glee said, "Live commerce is one of the most interesting developments in retail right now, and we wanted to give our visitors and exhibitors the opportunity to experience it for themselves. The Whatnot experience is particularly exciting because visitors can walk into The Clubhouse to watch a live show happening, talk to the experts, and even have a go themselves. For independent businesses in particular, finding new ways to reach customers and build communities is incredibly important. Whatnot offers a completely different way of putting products in front of people, and we're looking forward to offering our audience the chance to discover what it could do for their business." The Whatnot Takeover Join the Whatnot Takeover After Party on Monday 7 September from 4pm-8pm, when The Clubhouse will become a hands-on live commerce experience for buyers and exhibitors. Visitors can have a go at selling live themselves, with 1-to-1 support from the Whatnot team to help them experience the platform first-hand and understand how it could work for their business. There will also be food, drinks and a DJ, creating an informal opportunity to meet the Whatnot team and other retailers and exhibitors. Sign up to the Whatnot After Party and experience live selling for yourself at https://www.autumnfair.com/whatnot-takeover.

Whatnot raises $545 million at $20 billion valuation. Published: Aug 12 2026 Updated: Aug 16 2026 Whatnot has raised $545 million in Series G funding at a $20 billion valuation, nearly doubling its value in less than a year as the live shopping marketplace continues to post rapid growth in buyers, sellers and transaction volume. The round was led by ICONIQ, Lightspeed and Avra, with new investors including Kleiner Perkins, Wellington Management and Standard Capital joining existing backers Andreessen Horowitz, Bond, DST Global, Greycroft, Y Combinator and CapitalG. The new valuation is another major step up for Whatnot, which was valued at roughly $5 billion after raising $265 million in January 2025, then jumped to $11.5 billion with a $225 million Series F round last October. Whatnot surpassed $3 billion in livestream sales in 2024, more than doubling the previous year, before growing to more than $8 billion in live GMV in 2025. The company now says sellers generated more sales in the first half of 2026 than they did during all of 2025. More than 650,000 people are joining the platform each week, according to the Series G announcement, while the number of sellers who have crossed $1 million in lifetime sales has more than doubled over the last year. Whatnot also crossed one billion total orders in June. Chief Executive Officer Grant LaFontaine told Bloomberg the company expects transaction volume to double in 2026, while sellers are now creating more than five million new listings per day. Cross-category purchasing has also increased 170% year over year. Whatnot says the new funding will be used to attract more buyers, expand into new categories and markets, build seller tools and increase investment in Trust and Safety. Last month, Whatnot acquired machine learning company Shaped, bringing founder Tullie Murrell and nearly a dozen engineers and researchers into a new applied AI research group. The initial focus includes search, recommendations and marketplace personalization. Whatnot says it now has nearly 60% of the live shopping market across North America and Europe, but competitors are spending heavily to catch up. eBay says eBay Live GMV has grown roughly seven to eight times year over year as it adds categories and expands internationally. The company has not disclosed actual Live GMV, transaction volume or buyer and seller counts, making direct comparisons with Whatnot difficult, particularly as eBay has added five new markets over the last year. StockX officially launched StockX Live for US iOS users in July, initially focusing on sneakers, apparel, trading cards and collectibles. Those categories overlap heavily with Whatnot, with StockX offering $1 shipping through August and waiving seller fees through September to drive early adoption. Fanatics Live continues to compete in sports cards and collectibles, while TikTok Shop offers livestream shopping to its much larger social audience, and Poshmark continues to build Posh Shows around its fashion-focused marketplace. Whatnot is also facing scrutiny over rapid-fire auctions and randomized card breaks. Recent reporting from the Wall Street Journal has highlighted buyers who say they accumulated significant debt through rapid-fire auctions and breaks, including some who drained savings or maxed out credit cards. Whatnot says addiction and overspending have not registered as significant problems in its internal or external data. The company has introduced optional spending limits, watch-time controls and other tools intended to give users more control over purchasing. The company is also facing more than 70 arbitration demands brought by attorney Paul Lesko on behalf of users who allege some randomized card breaks amount to illegal lotteries. Whatnot disputes the allegations, saying gambling is prohibited on the platform and that card breaks are a longstanding collecting format. Its current policy requires every buyer in a break to receive at least one card. Whatnot has also faced scrutiny over shill bidding, which the company recently said has fallen nearly 80% over six months following expanded detection and enforcement, with user reports down 45%. As Value Added Resource previously reported, the company did not provide the underlying totals or clearly define what the 80% decline represents, making the scale of that improvement difficult to independently assess. Whatnot says its Trust and Safety team more than doubled in size last year and is now its largest function. Bloomberg now estimates co-founders Grant LaFontaine and Logan Head's stakes in Whatnot are worth more than $2.8 billion each. Liz Morton is founder and editor of Value Added Resource. She spent 17+ years operating ecommerce businesses before launching VAR. Her reporting focuses on seller experience, marketplace strategy and corporate accountability.