The IPO Buzz: StubHub Prices IPO at $23.50 – Mid-Point

Middle of the road: Online ticket reseller StubHub Holdings (STUB) priced its IPO at $23.50 – the mid-point of its $22.00-to-$25.00 range – and sold 34.04 million shares – the number in the prospectus – to raise $799.94 million on Tuesday night, Sept. 16, 2025. At pricing, StubHub had a market cap of $8.64 billion.

StubHub’s IPO is expected to start trading tomorrow – Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025 – on the New York Stock Exchange.

J.P. Morgan and Goldman Sachs led the  joint book-runners’ team.

BofA Securities, Evercore ISI, BMO Capital Markets, Mizuho, TD Cowen, Truist Securities and Wolfe Nomura Alliance also were joint book-runners on the deal.

Madrone Capital Partners, a private equity firm that serves as a family office for members of the Walmart founder Sam Walton’s family, will own 22.1 percent of StubHub’s stock after the IPO, according to StubHub’s S-1/A filings.

StubHub, based in New York, described itself as the leader in North America’s secondary ticket market, according to the prospectus.

“We believe we are the leader in the $18 billion North American secondary ticketing market based on our GMS for 2024 as compared to similar metrics of our largest competitors for 2024,” StubHub said in the prospectus. (GMS stands for gross merchandise sales.)

The company was founded in 2000 after Eric Baker, a co-founder and the current CEO, had difficulty “finding a ticket for a sold out event like the early performances of the Lion King,” according to the prospectus.

StubHub’s competitors include Ticketmaster, which is owned by Live Nation, as well as SeatGeek, Vivid Seat and Tick Pick,

StubHub intends to grab a large share of the original ticket issuance market.

In 2024, StubHub said it “exceeded $100 million of annual direct issuance GMS transacted on our marketplace” and noted that “(we) are only scratching the surface of this opportunity.”

Some IPO investors said they were cautious about StubHub’s IPO, due to its high debt load, weak 2025 revenues, history of net losses and net working capital deficit.

For the 12 months that ended June 30, 2025, StubHub reported a net loss of $116.74 million on revenues of $1.8 billion, according to financial statements in the prospectus.