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 expected to dip year over year as consumers digest the new rules, Baker told CNBC, which require online ticket sellers to prominently show the total cost upfront.
“We’ve seen this in states like New York that have done it. You have 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’re growing off the base because you now normalized it. So it’s just a one-time hit to conversion, resets the market, and then onward and upward you go.”
The online ticket marketplace is expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday under the symbol “STUB.”
StubHub late Tuesday priced its IPO at $23.50, landing at the midpoint of the expected range it gave last week of $22 to $25. The share sale values the company at $8.6 billion.
Online ticket sellers such as StubHub, Live Nation’s Ticketmaster and Vivid Seats have had to adjust 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 hide total prices and mislead people about fees in 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 advertising low prices for tickets, while a countdown clock creates a false sense of urgency and the total cost at checkout climbs “vastly higher than the originally advertised ticket price.”
Baker said the company has advocated for ticket providers to have “all-in pricing.”
“If you’re the only person in the market doing it for the reasons I said, you end up with a problem,” Baker said. “So now that everyone’s doing it, everyone’s happier, and you have 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 new company Viagogo.
StubHub delayed its planned IPO in April as President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs jolted markets.
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