eBay is piloting a host-matching program letting sellers hand off livestreaming to third-party hosts to scale its Live commerce push

eBay is preparing to roll out a streaming as a service pilot within the next six to eight weeks that matches sellers who don't want to go on camera with third-party hosts who handle the livestream, while sellers focus on sourcing and fulfillment, according to eBay Live fashion business development leader Emma Munguia, who disclosed the program during a webinar with Auctiva. Liz Morton of Value Added Resource notes that eBay Live has been available in the U.S. for nearly four years but adoption has been slow, with eBay now aggressively pushing Live content across its homepage, search, and app in ways that have drawn significant backlash from buyers and sellers who don't want livestream content surfacing in their browsing experience. Revenue sharing and consignment fee details for the streaming as a service program have not been disclosed, and Morton questions whether lowering the barrier to entry will drive meaningful adoption if sellers' underlying skepticism about whether livestream selling fits their business model remains unchanged.