StubHub, a secondary ticketing marketplace for live events, filed a registration statement Friday with the SEC for an initial public offering.
The number of shares to be offered in StubHub’s IPO and the price range for the proposed offering have not yet been determined. StubHub has applied to list its Class A common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “STUB.”
According to its S-1 filing with the SEC, StubHub generated $1.77 billion in revenue, up 29% year over year, and had a net loss of $2.8 million for 2024. That’s compared with $1.37 billion in revenue for 2023 and net income of $405 million. More than 40 million tickets were sold on StubHub’s marketplace last year from around 1 million sellers, according to the company.
StubHub had reportedly been looking to launch an IPO last year, but it tabled those plans given the down market for public offerings.
In its filing, StubHub said it faces “intense competition” in the ticketing industry from rivals, “some of whom have significantly greater financial and operating resources than we do.” Companies that operate ticket resale services that compete with StubHub include Live Nation’s Ticketmaster, SeatGeek and Vivid Seats.
StubHub’s employees are located around the world, including at hubs in New York, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Ireland and Switzerland. As of March 7, 2025, it had 918 full-time employees, including 260 employees outside the U.S. Of StubHub’s full-time employees, 370 provided customer service support.
The company was incorporated as Pugnacious Endeavors Dec. 17, 2004, and launched operations as Viagogo in 2006. In February 2020, it completed the acquisition of the StubHub business from eBay for $4 billion (after eBay bought StubHub in 2007 for $310 million) and changed its name on Sept. 8, 2021, to StubHub Holdings.
Eric Baker, StubHub’s CEO, also was a co-founder StubHub in 2000 while in business school, but he left before the sale to eBay.
In a letter to prospective investors in the S-1, Baker said the vision for StubHub is larger than being a major secondary ticketing marketplace. “We believe StubHub is positioned to become the global destination for consumers to access live event tickets, including those being sold directly by teams, artists and other content rights holders,” he wrote. “Despite having only recently launched our direct issuance strategy, we are already working with marquee content rights holders, including teams in the NBA, MLB and European soccer as well as with major musical artists and festivals.”
In 2024, the company surpassed $100 million of annual direct issuance gross sales transacted on its marketplace and Baker said it is “only scratching the surface of this opportunity.”
“For years, I have seen how technology has upended one category after another by creating frictionless access to the content consumers are looking for through competitive online marketplaces and how this in turn has created efficient distribution channels for content owners,” Baker wrote in the prospectus. “Across video (e.g., Netflix), information (e.g., Google), e-commerce (e.g., Amazon) and many other verticals, this shift has become inevitable.”
After the COVID-19 pandemic brought live events to a halt in early 2020, the market began to recover in late 2022. In 2023, the secondary ticketing market grew 24% year over year based on data published by Infiniti Research, reflecting unusually strong growth that StubHub said was “primarily due to the popularity of Taylor Swift’s record-setting Eras Tour.” In 2024, the company estimated that the market grew 5%, lower than the historical average due to the 2023 surge attributable to Swift’s Eras Tour.
Prior to the IPO, Baker owns 5.2% of the Class A shares in StubHub and 90.4% of the voting shares.
Thomas A. Patterson, general partners at Madrone Capital Partners — a major StubHub investor — owns 27.1% of the company’s Class A shares. Patterson is expected to serve on the board following the IPO. Other major owners of StubHub Class A stock pre-IPO are WestCap Management (11.0%), Bessemer Venture Partners (9.6%), PointState Capital (5.6%) and Declaration Partners (5.3%).
