TikTok Shop has tightened its rules for trading-card breaks in the US, restricting random team breaks to its own Surprise Set system while maintaining a broader ban on gambling and games of chance across the platform.
Under TikTok Shop’s current Gambling Policy, random team breaks are permitted only for eligible sellers using the platform’s Surprise Set feature. Team or other unit assignments must be generated through TikTok’s official randomisation tool, with external software, manual draws and off-platform selection methods prohibited.
Card breaks are livestream sales in which customers buy positions in sealed packs, boxes or cases before the products are opened on camera. In random team breaks, buyers are assigned a team and receive cards corresponding to that team.
TikTok’s Surprise Sets operate differently from conventional fixed-product sales because customers do not know precisely which item they will receive before the result is revealed through the platform’s system.
Policy changes reshape card-break market
TikTok has repeatedly revised its US rules during 2026.
A May version of the policy prohibited random card, draft-style and bounty breaks. By June, TikTok had expanded its examples of prohibited formats to include random team breaks, pull games, points programmes, train games, King of the Hill and HP battles.
At that stage, manufacturer-sealed surprise products remained an exception. By the 31 August update, however, TikTok specified that random team breaks could operate exclusively through its own Surprise Set feature for eligible sellers. Raffles used to allocate unsold positions are also prohibited.
TikTok says sellers offering breaks must meet eligibility conditions, including a Shop Performance Score of at least 2.5 and completion of its qualification process. Trading cards and memorabilia are currently the only product categories approved for conventional breaks under the US policy.
Surprise Sets expand beyond collectibles
TikTok introduced Surprise Sets before its latest restrictions on breakers and has since expanded the feature beyond trading cards.
Earlier rules restricted Surprise Sets mainly to collectibles, while later versions covered categories including electronics, home products, sporting goods, beauty items, fashion accessories and toys.
TikTok also changed how it regulates differences in item values. A July policy version required the highest manufacturer suggested retail price in a Surprise Set to be no more than 10 times the lowest and required the most valuable products to represent at least 10% of available items.
Those numerical requirements disappeared in September. TikTok now requires price differences to be reasonable and says high-value items must not be disproportionately rare, without publicly defining specific numerical thresholds. The company says sellers provide product prices and quantities when creating sets and that listings which fail its conditions are rejected.
TikTok maintains that gambling activities, including raffles, sweepstakes and transactions where users pay for a chance to win, are prohibited on TikTok Shop. It has also said Shop features and content are restricted to users aged 18 and over.
Legal challenges put card breaks under scrutiny
The policy changes come amid wider legal disputes surrounding the trading-card break industry.
Three breakers have filed cases against TikTok and Fanatics in the US District Court for the Central District of California. The first was brought in October 2025 by GFC & Supply, which operates as Bigpapa Breaks. Federal court records classify the case as an antitrust action and list TikTok, ByteDance, Fanatics and several NFL entities among the defendants.
Further claims followed in 2026 from David Skalsky, linked to Quad City Breaks, and Ohio-based Dorm Dudes. The plaintiffs have alleged various antitrust and unfair competition violations connected to their treatment on TikTok and their relationships with Fanatics products. The allegations have not been established in court.
Separate disputes involving platforms including Whatnot and Fanatics Live have raised the opposite legal question: whether some randomised card-break structures should themselves be treated as illegal lotteries.
No US state regulator or attorney general has publicly established a nationwide position that card breaks constitute gambling. In California, the Gambling Control Commission has said questions over their legality fall under the authority of the state attorney general rather than the commission itself.