StubHub CEO Eric Baker said Wednesday that recently introduced federal regulations around transparent ticket pricing will cause a “one-time” hit to its financial results.
Revenue is predicted to dip yr over yr as consumers digest the brand new rules, Baker told CNBC, which require online ticket sellers to prominently show the overall cost upfront.
“We have seen this in states like Recent York which have done it. You’ve gotten a drop off and it hits about 10%. … Then it’s just back to normal,” Baker said in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “You are growing off the bottom since you now normalized it. So it’s only a one-time hit to conversion, resets the market, after which onward and upward you go.”
The web ticket marketplace is predicted to start trading on the Recent York Stock Exchange on Wednesday under the symbol “STUB.”
StubHub late Tuesday priced its IPO at $23.50, landing on the midpoint of the expected range it gave last week of $22 to $25. The share sale values the corporate at $8.6 billion.
Online ticket sellers akin to StubHub, Live Nation’s Ticketmaster and Vivid Seats have had to regulate to the Federal Trade Commission’s “junk fees” rule that took effect in May.
The rule “prohibits bait-and-switch pricing and other tactics used to cover total prices and mislead people about fees within the live-event ticketing and short-term lodging industries,” the agency said.
D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb sued StubHub last August for “predatory drip pricing,” or deceptively promoting low prices for tickets, while a countdown clock creates a false sense of urgency and the overall cost at checkout climbs “vastly higher than the originally advertised ticket price.”
Baker said the corporate has advocated for ticket providers to have “all-in pricing.”
“For those who’re the one person out there doing it for the explanations I said, you find yourself with an issue,” Baker said. “So now that everybody’s doing it, everyone’s happier, and you’ve gotten a level playing field.”
The San Francisco-based company was co-founded by Baker in 2000, and was acquired by eBay for $310 million seven years later. Baker reacquired StubHub in 2020 for roughly $4 billion through his recent company Viagogo.
StubHub delayed its planned IPO in April as President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs jolted markets.
