Short answer: live shows are ordered by how many people are watching, and upcoming shows by when they start. Soonest first.
Nothing in either ordering is for sale.
The lists, exactly
Live now — most viewers first. So a show filling up rises, and one nobody is in sinks. It is the same list for everybody.
Coming up — soonest first, and only shows that have not started yet.
Items, on browse — you choose the order: newest, price low to high, price high to low, ending soon, or most bids. The default is newest.
That is the whole of it. There is no quality score, no store ranking, no secret weighting.
What is bought, and where it shows
Stores can buy a boost. What that buys is a slot on Home — there are a limited number, and when they are gone the seller is told to come back later.
Every one of them is labelled Promoted. The seller is told so before they pay: the boost screen says, in as many words, that buyers see the show labelled Promoted.
So a promoted show is visible as promoted, and it has not displaced anything in the live or upcoming lists. Those stay ordered by viewers and by time. Do sellers pay to appear higher?
The one thing that does change what you see
Your PIN code. A show from a store that cannot deliver to your area may not be shown to you, because putting it there would mostly waste your time.
That is a filter rather than a ranking — it changes which shows you see, not the order they are in.
Why ordering by viewers is defensible
It is the one signal nobody can buy and everybody can see. It also matches what the lists are for: a live auction with nobody in it is a worse place to arrive than one with a room.
The cost is that it favours what is already busy, which is why Coming up exists in pure time order — a new store's scheduled show sits in the same queue as anybody else's.
For sellers
The lever is viewers in the first minutes, and the thing that produces those is your own announcement — followers, a scheduled show people set a reminder for, a link you sent. How to schedule a show
A boost puts you on Home. It does not move you in the live list; the room does that.
More: do sellers pay to appear higher, how to find a show worth watching, how we make money.