Ticket reseller StubHub hopes to make an initial public offering (IPO) this month on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). This will be the company’s third attempt, the others having been in April and July.
StubHub estimates that net proceeds from the initial sale of more than 34 million Class A shares of common stock, at $23.50 per share, would amount to $735.5 million – “or $849.2 million if the underwriters exercise their option to purchase additional shares in full.”
The IPO-seeking part of StubHub is in fact StubHub Holdings Inc., consisting of StubHub’s North American business and of Viagogo.
Viagogo agreed to buy StubHub from eBay, for $4.05 billion in cash, in November 2019 and completed the purchase in February 2020. But the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) subsequently decided that the merger would occasion a “substantial lessening of competition (SLC) as a result of horizontal unilateral effects in the supply of Secondary Ticketing Exchange Platforms in the UK.”
This obliged Viagogo to sell the other StubHub – StubHub International, operating outside of North America – to Digital Fuel Capital LLC, of Massachusetts. That sale closed in September 2021.
StubHub Holdings is at present the parent of Viagogo, itself a secondary ticketing company, founded in London in 2006 by a StubHub co-founder, Eric Baker.
