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StubHub, the online ticket marketplace that earned a windfall from Taylor Swift’s Eras concert tour, has filed for a US initial public offering that will test investor appetite for tech listings amid a slump in Wall Street stocks.
The New York-based company said in a filing on Friday that it planned to list its common stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol STUB.
StubHub did not disclose the size or price range of the share sale but would seek to raise more than $1bn in the offering, according to people close to the matter, implying a market value of about $16.5bn. JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs will act as lead underwriters for the offering.
Last year the group reported a net loss of $2.8mn on revenue of $1.77bn, having made $405mn in profit on revenue of $1.37bn in 2023, according to its filing to US regulators. StubHub had an accumulated debt of $1.5bn as of the end of last year. It said that “material weaknesses” had been identified in its internal control over financial reporting.
StubHub’s filing comes as President Donald Trump’s trade agenda roils US equities, fanning concerns about slower economic growth and doubts about the revival of the IPO market after a three-year drought induced by higher interest rates.
But US equity capital markets activity has picked up in recent weeks despite the volatility and a 3.6 per cent drop in the blue-chip S&P 500 this year.
Google parent Alphabet on Monday agreed to buy cyber security start-up Wiz for $32bn, while New Jersey-based data centre operator CoreWeave said it wanted to raise as much as $2.7bn in what is expected to be the biggest tech IPO of the year. Klarna, a Swedish fintech group, also filed for a New York listing this month.
StubHub was co-founded by Eric Baker in 2000, who left the company before it was bought by eBay for $310mn seven years later. It was then acquired for just over $4bn by Viagogo, which Baker started in 2006, in 2019.
Last year, consumers bought more than 40mn tickets from over 1mn sellers on StubHub’s marketplace. The company reported gross merchandise sales of $8.7bn in 2024, up 27 per cent from the previous year.
StubHub was among the main beneficiaries of Swift’s 2023 Eras tour, which accounted for $665mn, or roughly 10 per cent, of the group’s annual ticket sales that year.
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