Ticket platform startup StubHub files for IPO, 5 years after eBay sold it for $4 billion in cash

StubHub, the ticket platform startup known for helping fans resell event tickets, has officially filed to go public on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker “STUB.”

In its IPO prospectus, the San Francisco-based company reported $1.77 billion in revenue for 2024 with a net loss of $2.8 million. That’s a sharp contrast to 2023 when it posted a $405 million profit on $1.37 billion in revenue. Adjusted earnings (EBITDA) for 2024 came in at $299 million—down from last year, but a significant improvement from a $57 million loss in 2022.

“StubHub had a loss of $2.8 million on revenue of $1.77 billion last year, compared with net income of $405 million on revenue of $1.37 billion in 2023,” Bloomberg reported.

StubHub has been in the ticketing business since 2000. It was co-founded by Eric Baker and Jeff Fluhr while they were MBA students at Stanford. eBay acquired the company in 2007 for $310 million. Baker had already left by then and didn’t have a say in the deal—but he came full circle in 2020, buying back StubHub for $4 billion through his other company, Viagogo.

“If it was up to me I wouldn’t have to buy it back because I never would have sold it, but everything worked out in the end,” Baker said.

StubHub sold more than 40 million tickets last year, with around a million individual sellers using the platform.

The company had planned to go public in 2023 but hit pause as the IPO market froze up. It wasn’t alone—rival SeatGeek was also exploring an IPO at the time, while Vivid Seats went public through a SPAC deal in 2021. Live Nation remains another major player in the space.

The IPO window now appears to be reopening. As we reported last week, AI infrastructure startup CoreWeave is expected to make its debut next week. Klarna filed its paperwork just last Friday. Earlier this month, Hinge Health filed to go public, and ServiceTitan went live in December. Reddit, too, made headlines when it started trading in February.

Tech IPOs have been slow since the end of 2021 when inflation and interest rate hikes made investors more cautious. If StubHub’s IPO goes smoothly, it could signal a broader return for consumer-facing tech companies looking to test public markets again.