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

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The profile

Viagogo closed its purchase of StubHub from eBay on February 13, 2020, weeks before live events stopped. In March StubHub furloughed 450 employees, two-thirds of its North American staff, and replaced its cash-refund guarantee for canceled events with credits worth 120 percent of the order. The District of Columbia and ten states later investigated; the District said 7,867 of its residents got more than $3.6 million back after StubHub reversed course in May 2021.

  • Category: events, venues, and creator marketplaces
  • Pandemic-layoff role: Deepest-cut ranking company
  • Last updated: 2026-09-25

Founders, executives and investors

Eric Baker co-founded StubHub in 2000 while a student at Stanford Business School, and later started viagogo, which launched in 2006. The company that bought StubHub was incorporated in Delaware in December 2004 as Pugnacious Endeavors, Inc., and renamed itself StubHub Holdings, Inc. on September 8, 2021. Baker is its founder, chief executive and controlling stockholder. Madrone Partners and Bessemer Venture Partners each hold more than 5 percent of its stock and have governance rights under a side letter with Baker.

Business before the pandemic

StubHub runs a marketplace where fans resell tickets to concerts, sports and theater. It charges fees to both buyers and sellers. Before the pandemic its "FanProtect Guarantee" promised a full refund of the price and fees if an event was canceled.

What the pandemic changed

Its policy page from 2020 offered customers of canceled events "a coupon valued at 120% of their original order," usable within 12 months. The District of Columbia's attorney general called this a unilateral change that stopped honoring the refund guarantee.

On June 22, 2020 Layoffs.fyi reported that 200 of the 450 furloughed employees would be laid off permanently "as live events continue to be shut down."

In May 2021, after the state investigations began, StubHub told customers who had bought tickets before March 25, 2020 for events later canceled that they could have a full refund instead of the credit. The settlements announced on September 14, 2021 required StubHub to show any change to its refund policies clearly and visibly before a customer agrees to it, honor its policies and process refunds promptly. The District's share carried a civil penalty of $468,050, waived if StubHub paid the refunds owed and kept to the other terms. StubHub's 2025 prospectus says it continued to discuss its COVID-19 refund practices with some U.S. regulators.

After the first shock

Britain's Competition and Markets Authority found that the viagogo-StubHub combination could substantially lessen competition in U.K. ticket resale and made viagogo sell StubHub's international business. The divestiture terms were put in place in September 2021, and StubHub finished combining the two businesses in September 2022.

Since 2025

StubHub Holdings sold 34,042,553 shares at $23.50 in an initial public offering dated September 16, 2025, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange as STUB. That is $800.0 million of stock; the prospectus estimated net proceeds of about $735.5 million. At the offering price, the 367,813,283 shares outstanding after the offering were worth about $8.6 billion. Class B shares carry 100 votes each, and the prospectus describes Baker as the controlling stockholder. As of August 8, 2025, the company had 895 full-time employees, 368 of them in customer service.

Sources

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