StubHub Falls 6% Below IPO Price on First Day of Trading

StubHub began its life as a public company with a modest decline on the New York Stock Exchange, as its shares fell below the IPO price. The secondary ticketing company’s shares opened at $25.35 and peaked at $26.34 before ending the day at $22.00, 6.4% below the $23.50 initial public offering price set a day earlier.  

A first-day drop isn’t unusual for companies that go public. From 1980 to 2024, 16.5% of IPO stocks had first-day losses, according to statistics compiled by the University of Florida’s Jay R. Ritter. But a far higher percentage of IPO stocks fell on their first day of trading in recent years. In 2023 and 2024, that figure rose to 53.7% and 34.7%, respectively.  

StubHub offered 34.04 million shares of Class A common stock. Prior to the offering on Wednesday (Sept. 17), the company had targeted a price range of $22.00 to $25.00 per share. Wednesday’s $22.00 closing price equates to a market capitalization of approximately $7.58 billion.  

The company plans to use the IPO proceeds to pay down debt and fund working capital. As of June 30, 2025, StubHub had debt of $2.38 billion, $1.24 billion in cash and cash equivalents and a negative working capital of $1.2 billion. Interest expense in the first half of 2025 totaled $86 million. 

StubHub was founded in 2000 by Eric Baker, who left the company before it was acquired by eBay in 2007. Baker founded viagogo in 2006 and built the company into a leading secondary ticketing marketplace outside of the U.S. Viagogo acquired StubHub in 2020, and both companies now exist under the StubHub umbrella.  

Investors in the IPO were buying into what’s known as a “controlled company.” Baker owns 100% of StubHub’s 3.64 million Class B common shares, and following Wednesday’s offering, he controls nearly 88% of the voting power. Each Class B share carries 100 votes per share to one vote per share for the Class A shares held by investors. That gives Baker the ability to control outcomes of matters that require shareholder votes, including the election of the board of directors.  

StubHub reported a net loss of $76 million on revenue of $828 million, up 3%, in the first half of 2025. Gross merchandise sales — the total value paid by customers for tickets and fulfillment — was $4.4 billion, up 11% from the prior-year period. Adjusted earnings before taxes, interest, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) was $102 million.  

Revenue growth was down markedly from 29.5% in 2024 and 31.9% in 2023. In a statement, Kyle Stanford, director of venture capital research at PitchBook, said StubHub’s “low revenue growth rate highlights uncertainty in the consumer market, on which it depends. Consumer sentiment has fallen over the past few months as inflation has picked up, adding headwinds to resuming the growth it saw the year before.” 

But StubHub sees favorable market conditions ahead and believes the total addressable market, which includes primary ticketing and secondary marketplaces, is worth $194 billion internationally. It puts the value of the secondary market at $18 billion in the U.S. and $23 billion internationally. Primary ticketing, where StubHub had $100 million of gross merchandise sales in 2024, is worth an estimated $132 billion globally. Additionally, StubHub believes $22 billion worth of tickets go unsold each year.