Live shopping is a casino

Old mate, Garry V.

Won't shut the hell up about live shopping.

He's been on about it for years.

Back when every platform had a live shopping button and every feed had someone holding a serum up to a ring light, Garry was telling anyone who'd stand still that this was the future.

He was right.

I've never been sure whether Garry saw the future, or just saw China.

China's livestream ecommerce did roughly 5 trillion yuan in 2023 (about US$680 billion). A pretty easy number to point at from Auckland.

Most of it runs on hosts and discounts.

Li Jiaqi got famous as the Lipstick King by selling lipstick on camera.

But wait, there's more

"Live shopping" sends me straight to Suzanne Paul.

Natural Glow.

"Thousands of luminous spheres" still rings in my ears to this day.

Sick days off school, under a blanket on the couch, watching a bloke in a TV kitchen with a blender.

I still couldn't tell you what he was selling.

It was the highlight of the day.

This was before Netflix and iPad babies. If you were home at 10am, somebody was selling you something.

That's roughly the version the West tried to copy.

A host, a product, a price.

Add a chat box and a funnel page Russell Brunson would be proud of.

Facebook rolled out Live Shopping in 2020 and switched it off on 1 October 2022. Instagram did the same in March 2023.

New Zealand had a go too.

Someone at the Herald must have been listening to Garry.

In 2023, NZ Herald and The Warehouse launched The Selection Live Shopping, Tuesdays at 12.30pm, hosted by Mike Puru. Episode one was winter essentials.

Puru had already hosted The Shopping Channel back in 2012, New Zealand's first home shopping channel.

It was pretty shit. I tuned in just to see what it was about.

Good host. Same format. No dice.

I'd filed live shopping under things that work in China and get pitched here every couple of years.

Then I listened to a podcast with one of the Whatnot founders, went looking at the numbers, and found out it's been cranking in the States. It just looks nothing like the dream we were sold.

Ninety-five minutes

Whatnot sold more than US$8 billion through live shows in 2025.

Six months into 2026, it had already passed that.

It says 60% of live shopping spend in the US and Europe goes through Whatnot. Buyers spend 95 minutes a day in the app, and 80% of them buy something every month.

More than 500,000 hours of shows go out every week.

Ninety-five minutes is a bit over three episodes of Shortland Street, ads included.

Every day.

Nobody gives a shop 95 minutes a day.

Pull up a chair

Open the app and it doesn't feel much like a shop.

Trading cards lead, mostly Pokémon and sports.

Then sneakers, coins, comics, fashion and, for some reason, live plants.

Most things sell by auction.

Plenty open at $1.

A countdown timer runs, and every new bid puts a few seconds back on the clock.

My dopamine receptors are begging for a break.

But all I'm offered is a different type of break.

A breaker buys a sealed box of cards and sells slots in it.

You buy a team, or pay a flat price and let a randomiser pick one for you. According to the arbitration claims against Whatnot, some breakers do the picking with a wheel spin, a dice roll or a playing card draw.

Once every slot is sold, the box gets opened live and you find out whether yours hit.

Repacks are mystery bundles of previously opened cards, sold with a floor and a ceiling value.

Sellers run giveaways to keep people watching.

New buyers get credit when they sign up.

Regulars get a Rewards Club.

Free spins, comps, a loyalty card, and a reason to stay at the table once you've paid to sit down.

The house edge

Suzanne Paul sold a known product at a known price.

A break sells you a slot, and you find out what you bought when the box opens.

Once the last slot sells, the breaker's margin is locked. So is Whatnot's commission. The only people still holding any risk are the 30 watching the box open.

Card rooms and casinos figured this out a long time ago.

The room doesn't play.

It takes a rake from every pot, and lets the players sort out the rest.

Whatnot's commission is 8% on most categories. On trading cards and a few other collectible categories, it only applies to the first US$1,500 of a sale.

A rake, but with a cap.

But the shape is less ‘online shopping’ and more ‘casino, but shopping ;)’

Some of the people holding all that risk have hired lawyers.

The claims allege randomised breaks are illegal lotteries under California law, and that repacks are illegal grab bags.

They describe Whatnot as an unregulated online casino.

Whatnot rejects the lot. "Gambling isn't allowed on Whatnot, and we strictly enforce this policy," the company said.

It points out that card shops have run breaks for generations, and that sellers who break are 4% of its sellers.

Both fair points.

Nothing's been ruled on yet.

The rest of the industry has already picked a lane. TikTok Shop bans spins and raffles.

eBay bans chance listings and only lets approved sellers run breaks.

Fanatics Live bans duck races, spins, rolls, raffles and roulette wheels, by name.

When your competitor has to ban duck races in writing, the format has drifted somewhere I wouldn't class as online shopping.

Australia has already drawn this line once. Since September 2024, any video game with paid loot boxes gets at least an M rating, and any game with simulated gambling is R18+.

A wheel spin on a shopping app isn't a video game.

No rating applies.

Whatnot is already in the room. It launched in Australia in October 2024 at the first Oz National Trading Card Show, at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne, with breakers opening boxes live on launch day.

New Zealand passed the Online Casino Gambling Act, with up to 15 licences to run an online casino here.

Fifteen licensed online casinos.

Then whatever turns up selling Pokémon cards with a wheel on screen.

So What.

Garry was right.

Live shopping got big in the West, in the categories where nobody knows what's in the box until it's opened.

If you sell anything collectable in NZ or Australia (eg. cards, vintage, sneakers), this will be your best channel and your landlord at the same time.

Budget around 8% commission, card fees on top, and most of your evenings.

My bet is this won't stay unregulated forever, and will be banned in many countries before it hits.

Thousands of luminous spheres. Now with a countdown timer.

Shout out to all the legends I've ripped info from for this piece:

ESPN | Whatnot | Value Added Resource | Style in Progress | Vendoo | Cherry Collectables | Australian Classification | Russell McVeagh | NZME | Chain Store Age | TechCrunch | Statista | Wikipedia