StubHub bills itself as a place built for fans, but a CBC News investigation has found that some of the biggest players moving tickets through the site may be much closer to home. According to CBC, while the company proudly proclaims on its website that it is a marketplace for fans to buy and sell tickets, its own regulatory filings tell a more complicated story about who is really trading on the platform.
The revelations come from official disclosures made to regulators. According to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the United States, submitted when StubHub went public with an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange last September, the picture that emerges goes well beyond ordinary fans buying and selling seats to a show.
At the centre of the findings is the company's own chief executive. In those documents, StubHub CEO Eric Baker discloses that he runs a hedge fund called Andro Capital, and that the fund buys up and resells millions of dollars worth of tickets on StubHub itself, meaning the head of the company holds a financial interest in some of the inventory flowing through it.
The arrangement does not stop with the CEO. CBC reported that StubHub as a company also has a deal to help bankroll other large-scale resellers, effectively financing mass scalpers who then buy up tickets and sell them back through the platform, so that both the executive and the company stand to benefit from the resale market they oversee.
For critics, the practice cuts against the image StubHub presents to the public. The investigation noted that while none of this is illegal, it raises pointed questions about the company's business operations and about how fans perceive it, since a marketplace described as being for fans is at the same time channeling tickets from professional resellers and its own leadership.
The concerns were echoed by people who work in the live entertainment business. CBC spoke with Randy Nichols, a band and artist manager based in New York, as part of its reporting into how the resale market squeezes ordinary ticket buyers, a dynamic that has fuelled growing frustration among fans and performers alike.
StubHub, for its part, was not eager to address the findings on the record. According to CBC, the company declined to give an on-camera interview despite repeated requests, leaving its filings and its public marketing to speak for a business model that, the investigation suggests, is far more entangled with professional scalping than its fan-friendly branding lets on.