Eric Baker co-founded StubHub as a Stanford business student in 2000, left, and then bought it back twenty years later. Before StubHub, reselling tickets meant scalpers outside the stadium or classified ads. StubHub built the first online marketplace for secondary tickets and sold to eBay. Baker went on to start viagogo, which bought StubHub from eBay in 2020. In September 2025 the combined company went public, with Baker as CEO.

Scalpers Move Online

Baker started StubHub at Stanford Business School with the goal of making tickets easy to resell safely. The company handled search, payment, delivery, and support, so buyers did not have to trust a stranger. It made money from fees on each sale. Baker later launched viagogo in 2006. In February 2020 viagogo bought StubHub from eBay, just before the pandemic closed every arena. In 2021 the company renamed itself StubHub Holdings.

Twenty-Three Fifty on the NYSE

StubHub priced its IPO at $23.50 a share in September 2025 and listed on the New York Stock Exchange as STUB. It planned to use most of the money to repay debt. The listing came five and a half years after viagogo closed its StubHub purchase. The offering raised about $735 million for the company after fees. Baker kept running the business as founder and CEO. StubHub still trades on the NYSE.

Cover: Audience at a Parisian Theatre II, Giovanni Boldini. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a theatre audience (live events).