- StubHub only mentioned one of its two co-founders in its IPO filing. Jeff Fluhr and Eric Baker started the company together in 2000, but StubHub’s S-1 filing makes zero mention of Fluhr, particularly in its prospectus outlining the history of the company. Baker left StubHub to start European industry twin Viagogo, which acquired StubHub in 2020.
Ticketing platform StubHub did not make a single mention of one of its two co-founders in the company’s initial public offering (IPO), which was filed with the SEC on March 21.
According to the S-1 filing, the company began in 2000 when its founder Eric Baker was a student at Stanford Business School, but the document fails to mention co-founder and fellow classmate Jeff Fluhr, who also helped jumpstart the business.
Now a partner at David Sacks’ Craft Ventures, Fluhr posted his side of the story on Linkedin claiming that Baker is attempting to “rewrite history.”
According to Fluhr, the two developed StubHub together for a business plan competition during their first year of business school at Stanford. While Baker chose to stay in school, Fluhr dropped out to become the company’s CEO. Baker joined the company 18 months later and the two agreed to a 75%-to-25% equity split in favor of Fluhr.
“So imagine my surprise when I read the S-1 describing Eric as the sole founder of StubHub,” Fluhr wrote. “In fact, my name doesn’t appear once.”
In 2004, Fluhr noted the two began to clash about the future direction of the company, ultimately marking Baker’s departure from StubHub. Baker, notably, retained 10% ownership in the startup.
“At a time when we should all be celebrating StubHub’s success, it appears old wounds are deep enough to lie about the company’s founding story,” Fluhr wrote.
Shortly after leaving, Baker founded industry twin Viagogo, serving the European market, in 2006.
While Fluhr exited the company after eBay bought StubHub in 2007, Baker took back the ticketing marketplace after Viagogo paid eBay $4.05 billion in a cash deal for the company in February 2020, just before the pandemic kicked off.
A StubHub spokesperson told Axios the “lineage of the entity being listed” is in regards to the parent company Viagogo and not the origins of StubHub.
StubHub did not respond to Coins2Day’s request for comment.
As the company gears up for its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, the New York Times reports StubHub is looking to raise more than $1 billion.
In 2024, StubHub reported a $2.8 million loss on its revenue of $1.77 billion. One year prior, the company profited $405 million on $1.37 billion in revenue. The significant dip in revenue came from a sales and advertising push, having boosted those expenses by $310 million to $828 million, a near 60% increase.
As StubHub looks to go public, ticketing marketplaces can be volatile on the stock market. StubHub rival Vivid Seats’ stock price has fallen more than 45% in the past year. Meanwhile, Live Nation, the parent company of Ticketmaster, has soared 21% year-over-year.
