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StubHub IPO: Stock Jumps—Then Drops—in Trading Debut

Sep 16, 2025 12:35:00 -0400 by Paul R. La Monica | #IPOs

StubHub is the latest closely watched initial public offering. (Gabby Jones/Bloomberg)

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Initial public offerings are selling like hot concert tickets, soaring in value from their original price. Investors were watching to see if StubHub, the popular marketplace for ticket resales, would be the next IPO to wow Wall Street.

It wasn’t a great debut. The stock fell more than 6%.

StubHub announced the price for its IPO after the closing bell Tuesday, and began trading on the New York Stock Exchange around midday Wednesday under the ticker symbol STUB.

StubHub priced its offering in the middle of its expected range, unlike other recent IPOs that priced above the range. It sold 34 million shares at a price of $23.50 a share, the midpoint of its proposed $22 to $25 range.

Shares rose about 8% to $25.35 once Stubhub’s stock began trading on Wednesday afternoon, but pulled back to end the day at $22.

At the $23.50 offering price, StubHub raised $800 million. The company is worth $8.1 billion based on where it closed Wednesday. Despite the stock slide, that valuation isn’t too shabby considering that the company, which was founded in 2000, was bought by eBay in 2007 for $310 million and then sold to European ticket reseller Viagogo in 2020 for more than $4 billion.

Created with Highcharts 9.0.1StubHubStock ticker: STUBSource: FactSetAs of Sept. 17, 4 p.m. ET

Created with Highcharts 9.0.1IPO priceSept. 171 p.m.2 p.m.3 p.m.4 p.m.21.5022.0022.5023.0023.5024.0024.5025.0025.5026.00$26.50

But investors should be careful. Like a once-popular band that’s overplayed its welcome and done one too many reunion tours, the stock could ultimately disappoint.

Recent demand for IPOs has been robust, with stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group , design software firm Figma , buy-now, pay-later lender Klarna , and crypto brokerage Gemini all lifting their price ranges and debuting above their IPO prices.

But the strong first-day performances have been partly fueled by the relatively small number of shares available in an IPO, typically only about 10% to 15% of the total share count. That creates a frenzied rush for the limited supply. IPO stocks often come down in price several months after they begin trading once lockup periods expire that allow insiders and employees to sell shares, which could flood the market with more stock.

IPOs also can face pressure once they report earnings for the first time as public companies and after Wall Street analysts initiate coverage of the stocks. That’s exactly what has happened to Circle and Figma, which are now both more than 55% below the peak prices they hit shortly after their first day of trading.

StubHub in particular could face some unique challenges.

The ticket business is highly competitive, with StubHub going up against Ticketmaster owner Live Nation and other resellers such as Vivid Seats and privately held SeatGeek. Vivid Seats, which is publicly traded, has plunged more than 80% this year. The company cited “pressure on consumer spending coupled with continued competitive intensity” in its most recent earnings report.

Competition could be even more intense as StubHub looks to step up its efforts in the primary sale of tickets, as opposed to just selling tickets in the aftermarket. To that end, StubHub announced a deal with Major League Baseball earlier this month that will allow MLB to directly distribute tickets to fans via StubHub.

The company may need even more partnerships like this. Growth hit a speed bump for StubHub in the first half of this year as well. Sales, which come almost entirely from fees, rose just 3%, to $827.9 million, in the first six months of 2025. StubHub reported revenue of nearly $1.8 billion in 2024, up nearly 30% from 2023. StubHub isn’t profitable either. It lost $2.8 million in 2024 and another $76 million in the first half of 2025.

StubHub co-founder and CEO Eric Baker said in an interview with Barron’s that the end of Taylor Swift’s popular Eras tour at the end of 2024 had a big impact on growth in the first half of this year. Baker said that if you backed out the Swift impact, the company’s gross merchandise sales, the dollar value of tickets, actually rose 20% from a year ago.

“The vision is for StubHub to be the destination for all live events,” Baker said, adding that the IPO is a key milestone for the company because StubHub will be able to use proceeds to pay down debt, clean up its balance sheet, and focus on growth.

Still, investors also have to accept the fact that Baker has overwhelming control of the company with a nearly 88% stake in the voting shares. Baker left the business after a falling out with his fellow co-founder before the eBay deal. He went on to found Viagogo, now StubHub’s owner.

One early investor in StubHub remains optimistic, though. Laurence Tosi, a managing partner and founder at WestCap, which has an 11.1% stake in StubHub, told Barron’s that he was attracted to StubHub because it’s an “asset light” business like Airbnb that should continue to generate steady revenue from fees.

Even though StubHub shares didn’t soar on their first day, investors should probably sit back and wait. Just as the price of a sold-out concert or sporting event tends to come down the closer to the actual event date, so could shares of StubHub in the weeks before its first earnings report, the launch of analyst coverage, and the end of its lockup period.

Write to Paul R. La Monica at paul.lamonica@barrons.com