Brady Simpson, a Ph.D. student at the University of Calgary, is digging into the blurred lines between sports fandom, collectible culture, online influencers, and gambling.
That intersection is card breaking - a livestreamed event in which a host opens sealed packs or boxes of collectible cards for participants who have purchased a share of the break. Viewers chat and react as the cards are revealed, with participants potentially receiving anything from valuable cards to those worth little.
When collecting meets chance
Simpson begins with the gap between what participants pay for a break and the value of the cards they receive. That uncertainty raises a central question for his research: When does collecting begin to resemble gambling?
Simpson is examining chance, the pursuit of valuable cards, repeat purchases, livestream entertainment, and the relationships between breakers and their audiences. The key question is whether paying for a chance to receive more valuable cards constitutes a gambling-like activity.
“Collecting things, whether they be cards, autographs, jerseys, or basketballs, can be an important part of identity expression; people find a lot of joy, community, and belonging in organizing, curating, and, ultimately, sharing their collections,” Simpson told Covers.
“Collecting, generally, isn't much of a gamble. But, breaking represents an opportunity for ultimate loss, while opening a pack of cards yourself will always yield something. In some cases, breakers will create conditions whereby they do not send cards. For example, if the total monetary value of the cards does not exceed a certain dollar amount, they don't ship them. From my perspective, you can argue that breaking becomes gambling in that case.”
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How Simpson got here
While doing missionary work in Micronesia, Simpson learned Chuukese, the language spoken in Chuuk, one of the four states of the Federated States of Micronesia. As he got to know young people and adults there, he noticed the role playing cards and gambling played in social life.
The experience showed him how games of chance could function as social activities outside major commercial gambling centers. Although it did not immediately shape his research path, it later informed his interest in gambling as a cultural phenomenon.
In nonprofit work that followed, Simpson saw gambling in the context of unemployment and financial pressure, prompting him to consider how people's circumstances might shape their decisions.
As a sports fan, Simpson became interested in the connections among sports fandom, gambling, marketing, consumer behavior, and culture as sports betting grew more mainstream in North America.
Online content and streaming brought the subject closer still. At one point, Simpson, who was a sports and card streamer, was offered opportunities to promote gambling. The experience prompted him to examine how an influencer's relationship with an audience could shape its response to gambling promotions.
Those experiences helped lead him to his current research on card breaking at the University of Calgary.
From gambling influencers to sports cards
Having built an online community of roughly 10,000 people, Simpson had firsthand experience with the relationships audiences form around online personalities and shared interests.
His interest in sports cards grew during the pandemic. As a basketball fan, he found his attention drawn toward the collectibles market in the period after Kobe Bryant's death. He watched card values rise, collectors move online, and livestreamed breaks become a bigger part of the hobby. Breaking businesses grew more sophisticated, and strong communities formed around individual breakers.
His thinking shifted from what people were buying to how they were buying it. Buying a specific card gives the collector a known item at an agreed price. Buying a slot in a break means paying for a share of an uncertain outcome, and that distinction is where card breaking became academically interesting.
“Influencers' authenticity is what makes them wield persuasive power,” Simpson explains. “Consumers can develop strong relationships with breakers, just like a regular coffee shop goer might come to know their local barista by name. Influencers and breakers, too, recognize their regulars and might give them additional attention. People participating in breaks also might get a bit of a thrill out of seeing someone else, someone who is seemingly popular, rejoice on their behalf.”
How card breaking works
Break formats vary. Buyers may select a specific team or player, purchase individual packs, or receive a randomly assigned team or allocation of cards during the livestream. Once the format is set, the cards are opened live, and participants usually do not know what will come out. A rare rookie card or autograph may be worth far more than the buyer paid, while other participants may receive cards with little resale value.
That is what separates a break from buying a card from a dealer. A dealer's customer typically chooses a known product at a known price. In many breaks, the customer is instead buying exposure to an uncertain outcome.
Card breaking is not one uniform activity, though. A buyer who picks a specific team faces a different level of randomness than one who pays for a randomly assigned slot, and the two may expect very different things from the experience. That variation matters to Simpson's work, because the question of whether a break resembles gambling may have different answers depending on the format.
Simpson's work is not simply asking whether card breaking meets a legal definition of gambling. He is interested in the consumer behavior and culture that surround it. Watching how breaks unfold, how viewers interact with the host and with one another, and how the community talks about outcomes gives him a view of the activity as participants experience it.
When the seller is the influencer
In card breaking, the seller often doubles as host and influencer, creating a more personal transaction than a typical retail purchase. Regular viewers may become familiar with the breaker, receive recognition during livestreams, and share in the excitement when another participant pulls a valuable card.
This raises questions about how influencers shape consumer responses to gambling-like products. The question reaches well beyond cards. Influencers increasingly promote sportsbooks, casino products, and other forms of wagering, and the relationship between promoter and audience is a key feature of that marketing. Card breaking is a useful setting for studying that relationship because commerce, entertainment, and community happen at once, in the same place and at the same moment.
“When watching the livestreams, I've started to get really excited on behalf of other people pulling a big card,” Simpson said. “I might not even know much about that particular trading card, but between the breaker and their chat community, the excitement is often palpable. It sort of feels like you're standing next to someone at a casino who just hit 777 on the slots. You're super happy for them in the moment.”
The psychology of the hit
Breaks produce a sequence of experiences that will sound familiar to anyone who studies gambling environments. There is anticipation before a pack is opened and uncertainty about what is inside. Wins are highly visible, disappointment is part of the process, chances to buy again come up repeatedly, and other people in the chat provide social reinforcement.
Unlike a conventional wager, however, a break typically leaves participants with physical cards that may retain monetary, sentimental, hobby, or scarcity value, even when they are worth less than the entry fee.
Where collecting meets gambling
A common framework for gambling involves paying to participate, chance determining the outcome, and the possibility of receiving something of value. How those elements apply to card breaking may depend on the format and jurisdiction. Some card-breaking formats appear to contain elements that resemble that structure.
But not all breaks are identical. There are important differences between purchasing a known team, receiving a randomly assigned team, buying a specific pack, and paying for a completely randomized outcome. Motivation matters too. A collector who wants cards from a favorite team may approach a break very differently from someone chasing high-value cards to resell.
That points to the key idea behind Simpson's research. It is less about declaring every card break to be gambling than about understanding where gambling-like mechanics emerge within a traditionally collectible product.
Research still ongoing
Simpson's research has not established that card breaking is legally gambling, causes gambling problems, or affects all participants in the same way.
“Right now, it could still be argued that breaking is not gambling,” Simpson said. “There are already strong arguments for mystery boxes, loot boxes, and trading card boxes to be considered gambling, too. Right now, a 15-year-old cannot walk into a convenience store and buy a bunch of scratch tickets, but they can walk into another store and buy out their entire assortment of trading cards.”
Card breaking has expanded quickly, while academic research on the practice remains limited. His findings can identify behaviors, questions, and similarities that deserve further investigation, but stronger conclusions will depend on the completion of the research and potentially on further studies.
For Simpson, the significance of the research at this stage lies less in proving that card breaking is gambling and more in asking whether existing definitions of gambling adequately capture the way consumers now encounter chance-based products online.
Beyond the cards
More products now combine entertainment, uncertain rewards, social media, and repeat spending. Card breaking offers a case study in how these elements can overlap in activities that consumers do not necessarily regard as gambling.
Loot boxes in video games sell randomized rewards for real money. Virtual items can hold value inside online worlds. Social gaming blends play with spending, influencer-promoted betting puts gambling in front of audiences through trusted personalities, and digital collectibles combine scarcity with speculation. Each has its own rules and its own debates.
Card breaking brings these elements together in a familiar hobby centered on physical items that people have collected for generations.
When does a hobby built around collecting become an experience shaped by gambling-like mechanics? Simpson's research is still working toward an answer.
