By DAMIAN J. TROISE
NEW YORK (AP) — StubHub acquired a lackluster reception on Wall Avenue Wednesday.
The ticket market’s inventory fell 6.4% from its preliminary public providing value of $23.50 per share on its first day of buying and selling. The corporate’s shares are buying and selling on the New York Inventory Trade underneath the image “STUB.”
StubHub supplied simply over 34 million shares and raised roughly $800 million. On the closing value, the corporate has a market valuation of about $8.1 billion.
StubHub plans to make use of proceeds from the sale to pay down debt and for common company functions.
The corporate, which is predicated in New York, stated consumers in additional than 200 international locations and territories used its platform to buy greater than 40 million tickets in 2024. It was co-founded in 2000 by present CEO, Eric Baker. He’ll stay CEO and preserve management of the corporate.
EBay purchased StubHub in 2007. Baker left the corporate forward of that sale and based worldwide on-line ticket alternate Viagogo in 2006. EBay offered StubHub to Viagogo in 2020 for $4.05 billion, primarily returning it to Baker, who then modified the title of the mixed firm to StubHub Holdings. It’s among the many largest platforms for secondary ticket gross sales. Its opponents embrace SeatGeek and Vivid Seats.
StubHub reported only a 3% improve in income to $827 million through the first half of 2025 in contrast with the identical interval in 2024. That places the corporate on tempo for slower income development after notching a 29% bounce for all of 2024.
Reside Nation, which dominates the first marketplace for ticket gross sales by way of Ticketmaster, reported a 1.8% bounce in income to only underneath $23.2 billion in 2024.
StubHub has come underneath criticism together with the broader ticketing trade over hidden charges and inflated ticket costs. The legal professional common for Washington, D.C., sued StubHub final yr, accusing the ticket resale platform of promoting deceptively low costs after which ramping up costs with further charges. The corporate can also be going through pricing and price inquiries in Pennsylvania and New York.
Ticket costs for concert events and sporting occasions have been among the many sharper rising prices for customers over the previous couple of years. Ticket costs rose 5.2% in 2024 after rising 6.8% in 2023, in response to the U.S. Labor Division’s shopper value index. Rising ticket costs outpaced the broader will increase for general inflation in each years and that development has continued by way of 2025.
The IPO market is on observe for its greatest yr since 2021. Different notable debuts this yr embrace the design software program firm Figma, the purchase now, pay later firm Klarna, Circle Web Group, which points the USDC stablecoin and the cryptocurrency alternate Gemini, which is majority owned by the Winklevoss twins.
This story has been corrected to point out the right figures for 2024 income for Reside Nation.
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