StubHub stock opened trading Wednesday slightly above its offering price of 23.50 per share. The StubHub IPO priced late Tuesday and raised $800 million for the ticket resale marketplace.
StubHub said that it sold 34 million shares at the price, which was within the expected range of 22 to 25. The company's shares opened trading at 25.35 per share Wednesday afternoon. Shares were ahead more than 1% from StubHub's offering price near 23.86 in recent trades on the stock market today.
The 25-year-old company last year processed more than 40 million ticket sales across 200 countries on its platform, which includes sporting events, concerts and Broadway shows. StubHub connects buyers and sellers and collects its revenue mostly from fees on the transactions.
StubHub's revenue climbed 29.5% in 2024 to $1.77 billion, according to its IPO filing. Sales grew 10% in its March-ended first quarter to $397.6 million. The company posted a net loss of $22.2 million in Q1 of this year, as well as a net loss of $2.8 million for all of 2024.
StubHub was cofounded by its current chief executive, Eric Baker, in 2000. It was acquired by eBay for $310 million in 2007. EBay sold StubHub in 2020 for roughly $4 billion to European ticket marketplace Viagogo, another company founded by Baker. The combined company became StubHub Holdings, led by Baker.
The company filed for an IPO in March before pulling back amid market turmoil caused by President Donald Trump's initial tariff plan.
Will Strong Run Continue For StubHub IPO?
The StubHub IPO comes as the overall market for new offerings is heating up. Last week saw seven large IPOs, the busiest week since 2021, according to Renaissance Capital. Those included strong debuts from "buy now pay later" firm Klarna and cryptocurrency trading platform Gemini Space Station.
StubHub is surely hoping for similar buzz. Something to watch is how investors perceive StubHub's positioning in a category dependent on discretionary consumer spending. It's a massive market, with StubHub estimating in its IPO filing that the addressable global market for ticket sales and ancillary services is more than $700 billion. But it is also fiercely competitive.
Live Nation-owned TicketMaster is the big name in the field, but StubHub is also up against smaller providers like Vivid Seats and SeatGeek. Vivid Seats stock has slumped 80% year to date.
The ticket market has also caught the attention of some regulators, who are scrutinizing fees and the prevalence of automated systems that buy and resell tickets at a higher price. The FTC is probing TicketMaster's efforts to stop robots from reselling tickets, according to a Bloomberg report this week.
