StubHub Is Said to Price IPO at $23.50 a Share
StubHub Holdings Inc. priced its initial public offering at the midpoint of a marketed range to raise $800 million, capping co-founder Eric Baker’s years-long pursuit of a listing for the ticket-selling platform.
The New York-based company sold 34 million shares for $23.50 each after marketing them for $22 to $25, according to a statement Tuesday confirming an earlier report by Bloomberg News. At the IPO price, StubHub has a market value of $8.64 billion based on the outstanding shares listed in its filings with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The US IPO market is on a hot streak, with about $4.7 billion raised since the Sept. 1 Labor Day holiday, excluding financial vehicles such as special purpose acquisition companies, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Shares of companies including Klarna Group Plc, Figure Technology Solutions Inc. and Gemini Space Station Inc. jumped in their market debuts.
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StubHub 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. The company attempted to go public last year after sales boomed from Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour, before postponing those plans citing unfavorable market conditions. It paused a further attempt in April after the US announced wide-ranging tariffs that sent the stock market into a tailspin.
The company is 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.
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StubHub’s 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 June 30, 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.
StubHub’s current structure reflects the ambitions of co-founder Baker. Now chief executive officer, Baker 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, the SEC filings show.
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 is expected to have 2.7% of the voting power after the IPO, while WestCap Management will control 1.3% of the votes and Bessemer Venture Partners will have 1% of the voting power. Madrone and Bessemer have board seats at the company.
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.
The offering is being led by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc., with more than 10 other banks participating. The company’s shares are expected to begin trading Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol STUB.