StubHub

• 1. Introduction

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  StubHub traces its origin to the late 1990s, when Eric Baker went looking for a secondhand ticket to a Broadway performance of The Lion King. He found no straightforward way to buy one, and the frustration became the seed of an idea. Baker built that idea into a company with Jeff Fluhr in San Francisco, incorporating it in 2000. It is now an American company that resells tickets and also serves as a primary ticket outlet, run under a parent called StubHub Holdings. eBay bought StubHub in 2007 for 310 million dollars. In 2020, it returned to Baker, who by then led a European rival called Viagogo, in a deal worth around 4 billion dollars. That deal formed StubHub Holdings, which also owns Viagogo and went public in 2025. Along the way, StubHub built partnerships with major sports organizations, including Major League Baseball and Anschutz Entertainment Group. It also became the first company to buy an advertising patch on an NBA jersey. The company has also drawn the attention of regulators, including the United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority, which investigated it over ticket scalping. What pulled Baker and Fluhr apart, and what kept regulators circling the marketplace they built?

• 2. A Founding Rivalry

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  Baker and Fluhr developed the marketplace concept together as part of a competition while both were students at Stanford Graduate School of Business. In March 2000, they incorporated StubHub in San Francisco to run the business. By August that year, they had raised 600,000 dollars in seed funding. Fluhr left school to become chief executive, while Baker finished his degree in 2001 and became company president.

  That same year, StubHub signed its first deal with a professional sports team, the Seattle Mariners. In 2002, eBay opened talks to buy the young company for 20 million dollars, but the deal reportedly fell apart over price. By its third year, StubHub employed 60 people. On the 17th of December 2004, the company was formally incorporated under the name Pugnacious Endeavors.

  That same year, tension between the two founders came to a head. Fluhr later described a 2004 falling out over which direction the company should take. Baker wanted to build partnerships with sports leagues, while Fluhr wanted to focus on growing the StubHub brand. The disagreement ended with Baker leaving the company, though he kept a 10 percent ownership stake. In 2006, he founded a rival agency, Viagogo, to compete in European markets.

  Even after the split, StubHub's numbers kept climbing. In 2005, the company had positive cash flow, with sales of about 200 million dollars and revenue near 50 million. It also lobbied successfully for changes to ticket resale laws in New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania. The new rules loosened limits on how far above face value tickets could be sold. In Florida, StubHub made about 6,500 dollars in campaign donations to legislators while pushing for the change.

  By 2006, tickets worth about 400 million dollars had moved through the platform, generating around 100 million dollars in revenue. The company by then employed roughly 350 people across 12 locations.

• 3. Partnerships And Patches

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  By May 2011, StubHub counted 62 partners spanning entertainment and sports, including the Fiesta Bowl, Boston Red Sox, and Ultimate Fighting Championship. That year, the company also partnered with ticketing firm Paciolan, a deal that brought 23 American colleges and universities onto its platform. By 2013, StubHub's roster of college partners had grown to 35 schools, including the universities of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Wisconsin.

  In December 2011, StubHub launched a pilot program in the United Kingdom, followed by full operations there in March 2012. That same year, Anschutz Entertainment Group made StubHub its official ticket reseller, covering both AEG's venues and its AXS ticketing platform. StubHub later added Everton F.C. of the Premier League and Major League Soccer's LA Galaxy to its list of team partners. It also partnered with consumer brands Amazon, The Athletic, BandPage, Spotify, and Uber.

  In 2013, StubHub signed a three-year sponsorship with Jockey Club Racecourses to sell tickets to races at Sandown Park, Epsom Downs, and Kempton Park. The same year, it bought naming rights to the Home Depot Center, the stadium used by the LA Galaxy, in a six-year deal. Four years later, StubHub became the first company to buy a jersey advertising patch from one of the big four American sports leagues. It signed a three-year, 15 million dollar deal with the Philadelphia 76ers that put its logo on players' jerseys starting in the 2017-2018 season.

  The 76ers patch put StubHub's logo on a player's chest, but by then the company's lawyers were far more familiar with courtrooms than locker rooms.

• 4. Courtroom Battles

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  In November 2006, the New England Patriots sued StubHub. The team alleged StubHub encouraged fans to break Massachusetts law by reselling tickets for more than 2 dollars above face value. StubHub countersued, arguing the Patriots themselves were engaging in unfair trade practices. In 2007, a Massachusetts Superior Court judge ordered StubHub to share a list of 13,000 users who bought or sold tickets on the site. The case was settled on undisclosed terms in 2009.

  That same year, 2006, more than 100 New York Yankees season ticket holders received letters accusing them of reselling their regular season seats on StubHub. The letters barred them from buying playoff tickets and from renewing season tickets for 2007. StubHub called the policy "a witch hunt against us and eBay for giving fans more access to these games." The Yankees said reselling through StubHub violated their season ticket licensing terms. In March 2013, the team sued again, this time over StubHub opening an office within 1,500 feet of Yankee Stadium. The parties settled the following month.

  Ticketmaster filed its own suit against StubHub in 2007, accusing it of selling "official premium tickets" to events where Ticketmaster held exclusivity deals. The suit claimed StubHub interfered with Ticketmaster's venue contracts. StubHub countered that the tickets were resold by the performing acts' own management companies and that Ticketmaster's fees had already been paid. It added that StubHub never held any ticket inventory itself. In 2008, Ticketmaster rolled out paperless ticketing designed to block transfers, first using it ahead of an AC/DC concert in Detroit. StubHub argued the system limited fans' choices.

  The fight resurfaced in 2015, when StubHub sued Ticketmaster and the Golden State Warriors in an antitrust case. StubHub accused them of conspiring to steer ticketholders away from its platform. The suit claimed the pair warned fans that reselling anywhere but Ticketmaster was unsafe. A court dismissed the case in November 2015.

  The dismissal did nothing to slow StubHub's push for a single, all-in ticket price, a fight that would eventually reach the halls of Congress.

• 5. The Price Of Admission

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  Chris Tsakalakis became StubHub's president after Fluhr's departure, and by 2008 the company was moving about 5 billion dollars in tickets annually. By then it had partnerships with 30 college and professional sports teams, including franchises in the NFL and NBA. Major League Baseball had made StubHub its official online ticket reseller in 2007, an agreement it renewed in 2012 with new terms.

  The 2012 renewal set a minimum ticket price of 6 dollars and required all fees to be included at the moment a fan selected a seat. StubHub said the change fixed an "optics issue" caused by fees appearing only late in checkout. The approach, known as "all-in" pricing, became standard across all StubHub sales in 2013. Even so, the Yankees and Los Angeles Angels opted out of the renewed MLB deal. StubHub reversed all-in pricing in 2015 after it led to declining sales, and by 2016 its revenue stood at about 940 million dollars.

  Revenue kept rising even so. It reached about 2 billion dollars by the time Tsakalakis resigned in November 2014 and was succeeded by Scott Cutler. Under Cutler, StubHub added PayPal integration for Android users, personalization algorithms, and in-app barcode entry to venues in 2015. By 2018, the company sold 4.75 billion dollars worth of tickets across 44 countries. That same year, Sukhinder Singh Cassidy became president, replacing Cutler, who moved to a senior vice president role within eBay.

  In 2020, StubHub told the US Congress it favored making all-in pricing mandatory nationwide. That same year, regulators an ocean away were reaching a very different verdict on the company's practices.

• 6. Scrutiny Overseas

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  In 2015, the United Kingdom rewrote its rules for secondary ticket sellers, requiring platforms like StubHub to list row and seat numbers with every listing. StubHub pledged to improve the information it gave customers. The following year, the country's Competition and Markets Authority opened an investigation into four secondary ticket marketplaces at once: StubHub, Viagogo, Seatwave, and GetMeIn. The inquiry focused on how the platforms shared data with ticket scalpers.

  Leaked documents known as the Paradise Papers showed a seller named Julien Lavallee running a multimillion dollar resale operation through StubHub, Vivid Seats, and Ticketmaster. A the 9th of November 2017 article in the Toronto Star reported that Lavallée expanded his business using "exploitative tactics." Those tactics, the paper wrote, "game the ticket marketplace and put entertainment beyond the reach of millions of fans who can't compete with large-scale scalping operations." The same documents suggested Lavallee and StubHub had discussed extending his operation into the United Kingdom.

  Investigations that followed the Paradise Papers found StubHub ran a separate section of its website for high-volume sellers. That section offered batch upload tools and reduced fees at certain sales volumes. They also found it likely that Lavallee used automated bots to buy tickets in bulk for resale. The CMA raided StubHub's offices in 2017 and later widened its inquiry to cover advertising for tickets not yet in stock and high-pressure sales tactics.

  StubHub made a "formal commitment" to improve customer information in April 2018. In 2020, the CMA said StubHub still was not adequately disclosing which venues might refuse resold tickets. The regulator also cited high-pressure sales tactics and a failure to give exact seat locations or vendor addresses. StubHub responded that it was working to resolve what it called "valid concerns" raised by the regulator.

  Those unresolved complaints sat on the CMA's desk as Eric Baker prepared, in early 2020, to close a very different kind of deal.

• 7. Return Of The Rival

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  In November 2019, Viagogo, the company Eric Baker founded after leaving StubHub, announced it would buy its old rival for 4.05 billion dollars. Just a week earlier, the US House Committee on Energy and Commerce had announced its own investigation into ticket sales and sellers. The committee requested information from StubHub and Live Nation Entertainment. The CMA also opened an investigation into the acquisition itself, barring the two companies from integrating operations while the sale could still proceed.

  Baker completed the purchase in February 2020, about 5 weeks before COVID-19 lockdowns began. The pandemic then wiped out roughly 90 percent of the company's revenue. Forbes writer Noah Kirsch later described the timing of the deal as "one of the worst deals in history."

  The acquisition was finalized in September 2021, placing both StubHub and Viagogo under a new parent, StubHub Holdings, with Baker as chief executive. As a condition of approval, the CMA required StubHub to sell its operations outside North America. The StubHub International brand went to Digital Fuel Capital. The company closed its Hong Kong and San Francisco offices in 2022, the same year Nayaab Islam became company president.

  In 2024, the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, Brian Schwalb, sued StubHub. The suit alleged the company used drip pricing and a countdown clock to create a false sense of urgency. StubHub said its practices complied with the law and matched those of competitors, adding that it supported uniform all-in pricing rules. That year, StubHub Holdings reported revenue of 1.77 billion dollars.

  That public listing followed two earlier, aborted attempts, in 2022 and again in early 2024, before the offering finally closed.

• 8. How StubHub Works

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  StubHub charges buyers a 10 percent fee and sellers a 15 percent fee on every ticket sold, with payments processed through PayPal's API. Sellers set their own prices for tickets to nearly any event. The company guarantees delivery by the time of the event and offers refunds for tickets that arrive late or turn out to be incorrect. It also sends staff to major venues to replace faulty tickets when it can.

  StubHub today runs offices in Los Angeles, New York City, Taiwan, China, Ireland, and Switzerland. It remains a marketplace built one resold ticket at a time.