Ticket marketplace StubHub enters the public stage

NEW YORK — StubHub made its public debut on Wall Street Wednesday. The ticket marketplace's stock fell 2% from its initial public offering price of $23.50 per share shortly after it began trading. The company's shares are trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol "STUB." StubHub offered just over 34 million shares and raised approximately $800 million. At the offering price the company has a market valuation of about $8.6 billion. StubHub plans to use proceeds from the sale to pay down debt and for general corporate purposes. The company, which is based in New York, said buyers in more than 200 countries and territories used its platform to purchase more than 40 million tickets in 2024. It was co-founded in 2000 by current CEO, Eric Baker. He will remain CEO and maintain control of the company. EBay bought StubHub in 2007. Baker left the company ahead of that sale and founded international online ticket exchange Viagogo in 2006. EBay sold StubHub to Viagogo in 2020 for $4.05 billion, essentially returning it to Baker, who then changed the name of the combined company to StubHub Holdings. It is among the largest platforms for secondary ticket sales. Its competitors include SeatGeek and Vivid Seats. StubHub reported just a 3% increase in revenue to $827 million during the first half of 2025 compared with the same period in 2024. That puts the company on pace for slower revenue growth after notching a 29% jump for all of 2024. Live Nation, which dominates the primary market for ticket sales through Ticketmaster, reported a 1.8% jump in revenue to just under $23.2 billion in 2024. StubHub has come under criticism along with the broader ticketing industry over hidden fees and inflated ticket prices. The attorney general for Washington, D.C., sued StubHub last year, accusing the ticket resale platform of advertising deceptively low prices and then ramping up prices with extra fees. The company is also facing pricing and fee inquiries in Pennsylvania and New York. Ticket prices for concerts and sporting events have been among the sharper rising costs for consumers over the last few years. Ticket prices rose 5.2% in 2024 after rising 6.8% in 2023, according to the U.S. Labor Department's consumer price index. Rising ticket prices outpaced the broader increases for overall inflation in both years and that trend has continued through 2025. The IPO market is on track for its best year since 2021. Other notable debuts this year include the design software company Figma, the buy now, pay later company Klarna, Circle Internet Group, which issues the USDC stablecoin and the cryptocurrency exchange Gemini, which is majority owned by the Winklevoss twins.