StubHub Stock Slides, Missing Out on IPO Euphoria

Investors have been flocking to crypto and artificial intelligence IPOs, but ticket reseller StubHub STUB has not been greeted with applause. The company closed its first day of trading down 6.4% from its opening price of $25.35 on the New York Stock Exchange and below its IPO price of $23.50, and shares are down a further 5.0% on its second day as of the time of writing. The 25-year-old firm raised $800 million in its IPO. It priced the offering in the middle of its target range, giving it a valuation of $8.6 billion (or $9.5 billion fully diluted).

Compared with the splashy pops of recent VC-backed debuts by Klarna, Figure, and Figma, StubHub’s first-day performance was fairly tepid. But another word for it may be “rational.” Retail investors—starved for tech IPOs and especially keen on AI and crypto companies—flooded the market and significantly boosted several public debuts while igniting concerns of IPO mispricing.

But StubHub’s offering was entirely of shares newly issued by the company, with no existing shareholders selling into it. It’s a notable difference from the recent cohort of venture-backed companies, which used their public listings in part to enable longtime investors to cash out. And also unlike these firms, StubHub carries $2.4 billion in debt. The company said it plans to use most of the IPO’s proceeds to pay down about $550 million of that.

StubHub reported a net loss of $76 million in the first half of 2025 on revenue of $827 million. It’s also one of the leading market players in an industry increasingly subject to regulatory scrutiny over fees and scalping.

Several of the heavy-hitter VC firms backing Viagogo, which acquired StubHub for $4.05 billion in 2020, are also among its shareholders. They include Madrone Partners, WestCap, Bessemer Venture Partners, and PointState Capital. These investors will get to cash out after the lockup period, which is typically 180 days. The next big questions will be how its stock price performs in the coming months and whether passing that milestone causes it to decline.