Eventbrite: Cut 45% of Staff in April 2020

Category: events, venues, and creator marketplaces
Pandemic-layoff role: Deepest-cut ranking company
Last updated: 2026-09-29

Pandemic-role map

Reader shorthand: ticketing platform that lost two-thirds of its revenue when gatherings stopped, then borrowed at 12.5% to get through it.
What Eventbrite did for customers: sold tickets and event tools to organizers it calls creators, charging a fee per paid ticket and nothing for free events.
What broke in the pandemic: paid ticket volume fell 57% in 2020 and refunds ran backwards through the fee line.
Relief role: no Eventbrite loan appears in SBA's PPP data; its rescue money came from a private credit fund and a convertible-note sale.

Before the pandemic

Eventbrite, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, ended 2019 with 1,140 employees, 29% of them at its San Francisco headquarters. That year it sold 109.4 million paid tickets and booked $326.8 million of net revenue, with a net loss of $68.8 million. Its model charged creators of paid events a fee on each ticket and let free events use the platform at no cost.

Part of its pitch to large organizers was cash up front. Eventbrite passed ticket proceeds to qualifying creators before their events took place, a practice its filings call advance payouts, and it paid signing fees to win ticketing contracts. Both bets assumed the events would happen.

What the pandemic changed

On April 8, 2020, Eventbrite's board approved a global workforce reduction "impacting approximately 45% of the Company's employees." The company put the restructuring charge at $10 million to $14 million and said the cut, with other measures, would save at least $100 million a year in operating expenses. The same filing reports that the board agreed, at chief executive Julia Hartz's request, to cut her base salary to $2 a year, effective March 16. By December 31, 2020 Eventbrite had 611 employees.

The advance-payout program became a liability. In March 2020 Eventbrite stopped making advance payouts and stopped offering up-front payments to new creators. At the end of 2020 its potential exposure on money already advanced was about $226.6 million, and its reserve for chargebacks and refunds had risen to $33.2 million from $2.7 million a year earlier. The company reported that creators, and the funds it held for them, had covered more than 99% of the advance-payout refunds requested since mid-March. A class action over its refund policy was filed in June 2020.

The 2020 results: paid ticket volume of 47.1 million, down 57%; net revenue of $106.0 million, down 68%; and a net loss of $224.7 million.

The rescue money

No Eventbrite borrower appears in SBA's PPP loan data. It borrowed privately. In May 2020 it signed a credit agreement with FP EB Aggregator, L.P. and FP Credit Partners, L.P. for $125 million of initial term loans, funded that month, plus delayed-draw loans. The loans carry interest of 4.0% in cash plus 8.5% paid in kind, a combined 12.5%, and run five years. As part of the deal Eventbrite sold the lender 2,599,174 Class A shares at a penny each. In June 2020 it added $150 million of 5.000% convertible senior notes due 2025.

After the first shock

Revenue came back slowly. Net revenue was $187.1 million in 2021, $260.9 million in 2022 and $326.1 million in 2023, within $1 million of 2019. It then slipped to $325.1 million in 2024 and $291.8 million in 2025. Net losses narrowed each year, to $10.5 million in 2025. At the end of 2025 Eventbrite had 636 full-time employees, almost exactly its post-layoff headcount, and $299.9 million of cash, of which $253.6 million was money held for and owed to creators.

Where the company is now

Eventbrite agreed on December 1, 2025 to be acquired by Bending Spoons. The announced price was $4.50 a share in cash, about $500 million in all. The merger closed on March 10, 2026, and Eventbrite's shares stopped trading on the New York Stock Exchange. It is now a private subsidiary of Bending Spoons.

Eventbrite Profile: Pandemic Layoffs, Business Model, and Current Status