StubHub, CEO hit with ‘deceptive practices’ class action over mass scalping

bb112 about 3 hours ago 30 commentsRead Article on cbc.ca

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dopamean•34 minutes ago

The article makes it sound like the information about Andro is new but it has been known for years. An SEC filing[0] from March of last year mentions it and I was able to find a post on Wall Street Oasis[1] talking about Andro three years ago. Awful, predatory behavior for sure. Is it just the issues with the World Cup ticket sales that have made people care about this?

[0] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1337634/000119312525...

[1] https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/private-equity/andro-c...

dclaw•about 1 hour ago

End it.

Make reselling tickets illegal again overall.

Allow resale within 5 days of the show only (for those that genuinely can't make it), and for face value+original fees only.

LeoPanthera•2 minutes ago

The UK is passing a law which makes it illegal to resell event tickets for greater than the face value.

oatmeal1•34 minutes ago

Live Nation needs to get the guillotine. The monopoly will find other ways of extracting value if you try to fix one problem created by it at a time.

Analemma_•44 minutes ago

The fact that "the name on the ticket must match your photo ID, but you can resell at any time before the event" would instantly solve scalping problems and yet nobody does it is your clue that nobody actually wants scalping problems to be solved. Scalpers are the sin eaters for Ticketmaster and the events themselves, taking the hate so the performers don't have to.

sofixa•32 minutes ago

Adding ID checks would make venue entry a slower and more tedious process.

gruez•1 minute ago

>Adding ID checks would make venue entry a slower and more tedious process.

Airports seem to handle them just fine?

irishcoffee•5 minutes ago

Here’s a wild idea, tie tickets to a drivers license/photo id number, and scan the id.

Edit guess that doesn’t work for kids. Start the tickets at 10k and drop them by a percentage a day. Automatic price discovery. Rich people can just buy them whenever they want.

1986•16 minutes ago

In the vast majority of venues, ID checks are happening anyway to verify eligibility for drinking.

darth_avocado•about 2 hours ago

> StubHub and its CEO, Eric Baker, have been hit with a proposed $5-million class-action lawsuit

This should be much higher. A class action lawsuit shouldn’t be worth less than what these people can make scalping a single Taylor Swift concert.

This just opens an opportunity for them to settle, admit no wrongdoing and then include a clause in the settlement that prevents further lawsuits.

gruez•about 1 hour ago

IANAL, but the exact language from the complaint was:

>WHEREFORE, Plaintiff, individually and on behalf of the Class, respectfully requests that this Court:

>...

>Award compensatory, statutory, and/or restitutionary damages, as applicable, in an amount to be determined at trial and that the aggregate amount in controversy across the whole class exceeds $5,000,000;

it doesn't say that the damages are capped at 5M, only that they're asking for at least 5M.

nubinetwork•about 1 hour ago

We've known for years that ticketmaster scams their tickets on StubHub. Concerts selling out instantly, to only see tons of tickets on stub...

I'm sure if they get shut down, they'll just do it again under a different name, but they can't pretend it's a small handful of scalpers when they're the ones doing it themselves.

i_am_jl•about 2 hours ago

For StubHub to have insider dealing isn't so surprising, but I am shocked at how brazenly and openly it's occurring. Nothing covert or concealed, just the CEO of a marketplace openly admitting that they run a hedge fund that resells scalped goods on that marketplace while keeping other scalpers off the platform.

tailscaler2026•about 2 hours ago

welcome to america 2026. where it's not only encouraged but expected that you're lying, cheating, and stealing your way to the top.

gruez•about 1 hour ago

2026? As if stubhub/ticketmaster only materialized after trump2?

mistrial9•about 2 hours ago

no, it gets more layers.. a quick search says "Through its affiliate Colloquy Capital, StubHub helps bankroll other mass ticket scalpers by providing short-term financing based on expected future sales, further inflating the volume of professional resellers on the platform." (I have no direct knowledge of these participants)

vjvjvjvjghv•about 1 hour ago

I don’t really understand the outrage over scalpers. Isn’t this just normal market behavior? Is a retailer that buys things and sells them with a markup a scalper?

People seem to be willing to pay crazy prices for events.

Brendinooo•about 1 hour ago

>Is a retailer that buys things and sells them with a markup a scalper?

If you bought all of the food then offered the food at 10x the prices, we'd be outraged with you, yes.

Stakes are lower because it's a luxury good, not food, but it's the same idea.

bawolff•30 minutes ago

There is a reason this doesn't work in general though.

If you bought up all the food, farmers would raise prices until either you couldn't afford to do that anymore or eventually there is a splurge of new farmers taking advantage of all your free money until you run out of money. It could maybe work in times of famine where the government introduces price controls or rationing; it does not work in normal times.

For black markets (which is essentially what scalping is) to work, there has to be some shortage of a good that is priced artificially low. It works with concerts because singers can only sing so much but they also don't want to make the concert so unaffordable that only millionaires can go. There are very few situations like that. In most industries you would just increase prices until supply equals demand.

pixl97•20 minutes ago

Onion futures act.

This is the reason that businesses don't try to monopolize the food industry. It's not competition as we just saw from the egg industry. The government gets pushed back from the masses pretty quickly on food related issues.

sushid•about 1 hour ago

It's not a simple buy/sell marketplace. There's no recourse for fans who purchase a confirmed ticket, only to find that the seller "doesn't have them" and see the same ticket relisted for higher if the price jumps. Stubhub prioritize these scalper relationships and doesn't meaningfully protect its buyers from getting screwed over.

fecal_henge•about 1 hour ago

The ultimate customers would certainly pay more than the face price which is what the scalpers pay, yet the scalpers get all the tickets. This is abnormal market behaviour.

andrew_lettuce•about 1 hour ago

The outrage is over the apparent collusion between a platform that argues it only facilitates a fan-to-fan marketplace, and a hedge fund run by the platform's CEO that sells a massive volume of resale tickets. This is definitely not on the spirit of competition regardless of it's illegal or not

sdthjbvuiiijbb•about 1 hour ago

Yes it's rational market behavior. But it bothers people for such a blatantly worthless middleman to capture all consumer surplus for themselves while providing zero value.

xnx•about 2 hours ago

Scummy behavior, but customers are also tacitly endorsing high prices when they pay $1500 for a Taylor Swift (or name your artist) ticket.

gruez•about 1 hour ago

You're not entirely wrong, but the root issue is artists not charging the market clearing price for tickets. If you're selling something worth $1000 for $200, you shouldn't be surprised arbitrageurs pop up to take advantage.

eightysixfour•about 1 hour ago

> You're not entirely wrong, but the root issue is artists not charging the market clearing price for tickets.

Because there is value for the artist in maintaining the perception of accessibility.

gruez•23 minutes ago

That's also easy to solve. Allocate discounted tickets by lottery and bind to a name (think airline tickets). If for whatever reason they can't make it, the ticket goes back into the lottery pool. Or maybe if they want the tickets to be transferable, you can put in some nominee ticket holders (eg. max 3 people you can transfer it to).

godsinhisheaven•about 1 hour ago

I understand the arguments against charging the market clearing price, but I do just think it would be very funny for Taylor Swift to sell out a concert charging $10k+ a ticket.

badgersnake•about 1 hour ago

This argument has been made a lot on this site, mainly by people who don’t understand live music.

bawolff•29 minutes ago

What is it that they don't understand about live music?