StubHub files for IPO, acknowledges risks

Following months of rumours, secondary ticketing marketplace StubHub has filed for an initial public offering (IPO) in New York.

The company, which operates as Viagogo outside North America, originally planned to go public last summer with a target valuation of US$16.5 billion only to later postpone the move, reportedly due to unfavourable market conditions.

But it has now pressed ahead with its SEC filing, which sets out its “mission” to be the “global destination for consumers to access live events and experiences”.

“We believe we operate the largest global secondary ticketing marketplace for live events,” reads the prospectus. “Our business model has achieved scale with high growth and generated significant revenue, profit and cash flow. We connect fans around the world with sellers who use our marketplace to reach passionate fans and price tickets efficiently.”

The firm says that buyers from over 200 countries and territories purchased more than 40 million tickets from over 1m sellers on its marketplace in 2024, reporting that its revenue rose 29.5% year-on-year to $1.77 billion. It posted a net loss of $2.8m – attributed to increased costs and expenses – compared to a net profit of $405.2m in 2023 and a net loss of $261m in 2022.

“We believe the international secondary ticketing market represents a $23 billion opportunity over the medium term”

“We believe we are the leader in the $18 billion North American secondary ticketing market based on our GMS [gross merchandise sales] for 2024 as compared to similar metrics of our largest competitors for 2024,” it continues. “We believe the international secondary ticketing market represents a $23 billion opportunity over the medium term as these markets continue to be penetrated by global digital commerce.

“We are also growing in the $132 billion global original issuance market and believe we can help enable the distribution and recovery of approximately $22 billion in unsold tickets through our marketplace.”

Viagogo announced its acquisition of StubHub for US$4.05bn in 2019 in a landmark deal that brought together the world’s two largest secondary ticket sellers, and placed Viagogo founder and CEO Eric Baker back in control of the company he co-founded in 2000.

The sale was approved by the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) after Viagogo was forced to sell its international business due to competition concerns.

In its IPO filing, StubHub acknowledges that its business is subject to a “number of risks and uncertainties”.

“Our business depends on supply and demand for and continued occurrence of large-scale sports, concerts, theatre and other live events, and any decrease in the number of such events or the willingness of consumers to attend such events could have a material and adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations,” says the document.

“This indicates a recovering US IPO market with owners seeing a window of opportunity to go public”

StubHub also notes that “changes in internet search engine algorithms and dynamics, or any limitation or discontinuation of support by such search engines for our paid search results, could have an adverse impact on traffic for our sites and ultimately, our business, financial condition and results of operations”.

Viagogo was banned from advertising on Google globally in July 2019 after the latter came under fire from lawmakers for allegedly accepting advertising money from sites listing tickets fraudulently. The ban was quietly lifted four months later.

The Face-value European Alliance for Ticketing (FEAT) – which is dedicated to the promotion of face-value ticket resale across the continent – has said that it is estimated that Google is responsible for driving two-thirds of traffic to Viagogo.

Meanwhile, the UK government launched a consultation into the secondary ticketing market in January, with measures being considered including a new cap on the price of resale tickets, alongside plans to limit the number of tickets resellers can list to the maximum they are allowed to purchase on the primary market. Various other legislative initiatives relating to resale are also already in place in other territories.

Alluding to the state of play, StubHub notes: “We operate in international markets and are subject to risks associated with the legislative, judicial, accounting, regulatory, political and economic conditions specific to such markets, which could adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.”

Furthermore, it states: “We have identified material weaknesses in our internal control over financial reporting. If we fail to remedy these material weaknesses, experience additional material weaknesses in the future or otherwise fail to continue to design, implement and maintain effective internal control over financial reporting, we may not be able to accurately report our financial condition or results of operations which may adversely affect investor confidence in us and, as a result, the value of our Class A common stock.”

Nevertheless, Josef Schuster, CEO of financial institution IPOX, describes StubHub as “one of the most closely watched IPOs this year”.

“StubHub’s filing follows on the recent filings of other high-profile deals set to go public soon, including CoreWeave and Klarna,” he tells Reuters. “This indicates a recovering US IPO market with owners seeing a window of opportunity to go public.”

Get more stories like this in your inbox by signing up for IQ Index, IQ’s free email digest of essential live music industry news.

Read More Like This

News|06 Mar 2025

StubHub contractors ‘stole and resold 900+ tickets’

The perpetrators allegedly used backdoor access to StubHub's platform to redirect hundreds of tickets to concerts by Taylor Swift and more

News|24 Feb 2025

Secondary schooling: Legislating resale worldwide

Looking around the planet at various legislative initiatives, IQ provides an update on the success some have had in ousting the touts