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Ticket platform StubHub erases gains to fall below IPO price
The trading gives StubHub a market capitalisation of about $8.5 billion based on the outstanding shares listed in its earlier filings.
Shares of StubHub Holdings Inc. fell below the IPO price after the ticketing platform raised $800 million in its US initial public offering that priced in the middle of its marketed range.
The StubHub stock traded at $23.11 each as of 12:58 pm Wednesday, erasing an earlier gain. The firm sold 34 million shares on Tuesday at $23.50, after offering them for $22 to $25 each.
The trading gives StubHub a market capitalisation of about $8.5 billion based on the outstanding shares listed in its earlier filings.
The US IPO market has been strong in recent weeks, with about $5.3 billion raised since the 1 September Labour Day holiday, excluding financial vehicles such as special purpose acquisition companies, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Shares of companies including Klarna Group Plc and Figure Technology Solutions Inc. have held onto early gains.
StubHub’s offering finished multiple times oversubscribed.
The company has pursued going public since at least 2022, first via a direct listing that might have valued it at more than $13 billion, Bloomberg News reported at the time. It attempted to go public last year after sales boomed from Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, before postponing those plans. It paused a further attempt in April after the US announced wide-ranging tariffs that sent the stock market into a tailspin.
Founded in 2000, the company has been focused on secondary ticketing. It has more recently been making a push into new ticket issuance, which so far accounts for only a fraction of its ticket sales. This month it announced a multi-year partnership with Major League Baseball to offer tickets to games.
StubHub had a net loss of $76 million on revenue of $827.9 million in the six months ended June 30, versus a net loss of $24 million on revenue of $803.5 million in the same period in 2024, the filings show.
Its gross merchandise sales, representing the total value paid by ticket buyers, including fees and proceeds to sellers, rose to $4.4 billion in the six months ended 30 June, above the $3.9 billion in the same period last year, the filing shows.
The IPO comes as US regulators and lawmakers are increasingly subjecting the ticket industry to scrutiny. Live Nation Inc.’s Ticketmaster is being probed by the US Federal Trade Commission over whether it’s done enough to keep bots from illegally reselling tickets on its platform, Bloomberg News reported Monday. Ticketmaster has denied violating the law and intends to defend itself.
The White House issued an executive order in March on ticketing, mandating a report on how agencies are complying by the end of September.
Additionally, the Justice Department and dozens of state attorneys general filed a lawsuit seeking to break up Live Nation and Ticketmaster that’s scheduled for trial in March, and legislation that includes a ban on selling or advertising tickets that resellers don’t possess is moving in the Senate.
The company has always lobbied for the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, Chief Executive Officer Eric Baker said in an interview on Bloomberg Television. The act, which was passed in 2016, bans the use of automated methods of circumventing per-person ticket limits for popular events.
“We believe tickets need to be distributed in a way that is safe, secure and democratic, through open channels,” Baker said.
Co-Founder Ambitions
StubHub’s current structure reflects Baker’s ambitions. He left before the business was sold in 2007 to eBay Inc. for $310 million, and later founded Viagogo in Europe. In 2019, Viagogo agreed to acquire StubHub for $4.05 billion. The deal closed the following year, and the two businesses completed the integration in 2022 after receiving regulatory approval.
Baker will hold 4.2% of the Class A shares and, with his Class B shares that carry 100 votes each, will have 88.3% of the voting power in the company after the offering, according to the filings.
Madrone Partners LP was expected to own 22.1% of the shares after the IPO, while WestCap Management was set to have 11.1% of the stock and Bessemer Venture Partners would have 7.9%, the filings show. Madrone and Bessemer have board seats at the company.
The offering was led by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., with more than 10 other banks participating. The company’s shares trade on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol STUB.
Bloomberg's Ed Ludlow and Caroline Hyde contributed to this story.
