There is a version of the founder-comeback story that ends with a rueful podcast appearance. Eric Baker’s ends with a wire transfer of $4.05 billion.
Baker co-founded StubHub in 2000 while a student at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He was pushed out of the company in 2004. Fifteen years later, the European ticketing marketplace he built in the meantime bought StubHub back — and in September 2025 he rang the bell for its IPO as its chief executive and chairman.
What that clean arc leaves out is that almost nothing about it was clean.
The pitch nobody wanted
The idea began, by Baker’s own telling, with a ticket he could not get. Speaking on Bessemer Venture Partners’ Wish I Knew podcast in November 2022, he described the reaction to wanting Lion King tickets and finding the resale market a mess: “There’s gotta be a better way for the resale of tickets.”
Nobody in the industry agreed. Baker’s account of trying to sell the concept in 2000 is a list of rooms he was ejected from: “I was thrown out of the NFL offices. I was thrown out of team offices.” He recalled Ticketmaster’s then-chief executive, Fred Rosen, telling him: “Eric, all you need to know are four words. It will never happen.”
Baker recruited a co-founder out of the same Stanford program — “I have this great idea and it’d be great if you know someone would drop out of school,” is how he described the pitch — and StubHub was incorporated in October 2000. That co-founder was Jeff Fluhr, who dropped out, became CEO, and led fundraising and the early sports-league partnerships.
Fired from his own company
The two did not agree on where the company should go, and in 2004 the disagreement resolved itself in the way these things usually do: the person who is not CEO leaves.
Baker’s version, again from the Bessemer interview, is almost comic in its compression. He describes a confrontation that ended in “If you don’t like it, you can quit… Screw you, you can fire me” — followed by “and so shockingly they just said, hey, you’re fired.”
Three years after that, in 2007, Fluhr sold StubHub to eBay for $310 million. Baker was not part of it.
Building the thing that could buy it back
He went to London instead. His read on the European market in 2005 was, he said, a matter of noticing an absence: “I’ll use the StubHub of Europe. And lo and behold, there was no StubHub of Europe and I said, gosh, this is a great opportunity.”
That company was viagogo. It grew through a decade that killed off most of its competition — Baker’s summary of surviving the 2008 downturn is that “stupid competitors went away and many of us got a real opportunity to build a lasting business after getting through that dip” — and by 2019 it was in a position most ousted founders never reach.
When eBay put StubHub up for sale, Baker did not just bid. He argued that the buyer mattered: “If we were able to acquire this, we can create more value than anyone else who would buy it.”
On November 25, 2019, eBay announced it had agreed to sell StubHub to viagogo for $4.05 billion in cash. Baker’s line in the press release, given as founder and CEO of viagogo, was not about strategy: “It has long been my wish to unite the two companies. I am so proud of how StubHub has grown over the years and excited about the possibilities for our shared future.”
The deal closed in February 2020. Within weeks, every live event on earth was cancelled.
The IPO, and the argument about who founded what
StubHub Holdings listed on the New York Stock Exchange on September 17, 2025, priced at $23.50 a share. Outlets valued the company differently on the day — Forbes put it at about $8.6 billion, TechCrunch at over $7 billion — because they counted different share classes.
Six months before that, in March 2025, the prospectus itself became the story. StubHub’s S-1, filed March 21, 2025, told the company’s origin story with Baker as its founder and did not mention Jeff Fluhr at all. Fluhr responded on LinkedIn. “So imagine my surprise when I read the S-1 describing Eric as the sole founder of StubHub,” he wrote. “In fact, my name doesn’t appear once.” He added: “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.”
A StubHub spokesperson told Axios that the “lineage of the entity being listed” referred to the parent company, viagogo, rather than to StubHub’s original founding. Fortune, which reported the exchange on March 27, 2025, said StubHub did not respond to its own request for comment.
It is worth sitting with how odd that is. Baker’s most compelling story — thrown out of the NFL’s offices, fired by his co-founder, gone to build the thing that would buy his old company back — requires the co-founder to exist. The prospectus told a version in which he did not.
The business is growing. The stock is not.
The numbers since the IPO have gone in two directions at once.
Full-year 2025, reported March 4, 2026, looked brutal on the bottom line: $1.7 billion in revenue, $9.2 billion in gross merchandise sales, and a $1.9 billion net loss. Most of that loss was mechanical — the company disclosed a one-time $1.4 billion stock-compensation charge tied to the IPO plus a non-recurring, non-cash valuation-allowance expense of $479 million. Adjusted EBITDA for the year was $232 million.
The operating business then had its best quarter on record. On August 12, 2026, StubHub reported second-quarter GMS of $3.1 billion, up 34% year over year, revenue of $573.1 million (up 33%), net income of $14.6 million against a $53.8 million loss a year earlier, and adjusted EBITDA of $105.7 million — nearly double. “The second quarter demonstrated strong demand for live events, highlighted by a record-setting World Cup,” Baker said in the release.
Investors have not rewarded it. The stock traded at $9.12 on August 5, 2026, according to a Form 4 covering a routine 18,130-share tax-withholding disposition by Baker; that is roughly 61% below the $23.50 IPO price, against a 52-week low of $5.74 set in April and a market capitalization around $3.1 billion. Estimates of the size of Baker’s own stake vary widely between outlets, and this piece does not pick one.
The unresolved part
On July 27, 2026, Fortune’s Diane Brady reported that Baker is under scrutiny over Andro Capital, an investment firm that buys tickets in bulk and resells them — including on StubHub — and for which Baker is managing director. Representative Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) sent a letter asking, among other things, whether Baker had “manipulated markets for your own benefit, while Americans are left paying higher costs in an unfair system.”
StubHub’s response, provided to Fortune, was that “Eric’s investment in Andro Capital has been disclosed publicly. Andro Capital is a separate company and is one of many vendors we use.” No finding has been made against Baker or the company, and the questions raised in that letter remain open.
It is a fittingly unsettled place for a founder whose whole record is unsettled arguments — with Ticketmaster, with his co-founder, with a market that told him in 2000 that it would never happen. The one thing not in dispute is the outcome. He was fired from StubHub in 2004. He is founder, chairman and chief executive of the public company that carries its name now.
Related founders
- Ben Francis Is Trying to Buy Back the Stake He Sold in Gymshark — another founder whose defining second act is repurchasing what he gave away.
- Christina Cacioppo Built Vanta From a Spreadsheet to $300M ARR — the opposite temperament: no ouster, no feud, and a founder in no hurry for the day of confetti.
- How to Split Equity Between Co-Founders — the mechanism underneath the StubHub story, and why founder splits so often end in court or on LinkedIn.
Baker’s age, the October 2000 founding, Jeff Fluhr’s role, the 2004 ouster, the $310 million eBay sale in 2007 and the IPO-day valuation of about $8.6 billion are per Forbes (Alicia Park, September 17, 2025). The Stanford Graduate School of Business detail, viagogo’s 2005 London founding, the $4.05 billion purchase price and the COVID timing are per TechCrunch (Marina Temkin, September 17, 2025), which valued the company at over $7 billion on IPO day. All Baker quotes about the Lion King, the NFL offices, Fred Rosen, recruiting a co-founder, being fired, founding viagogo, surviving 2008 and acquiring StubHub are from Bessemer Venture Partners’ “Wish I Knew” podcast episode with Baker, dated November 28, 2022. The November 25, 2019 acquisition announcement, the $4.05 billion cash price and Baker’s quote about uniting the two companies are per the eBay/viagogo press release of that date. The S-1 founding dispute, Fluhr’s LinkedIn statement, and StubHub’s response to Axios are per Fortune (Stuart Dyos, March 27, 2025). Full-year 2025 and second-quarter 2026 financials and Baker’s quotes about them are from StubHub Holdings’ own press releases dated March 4, 2026 and August 12, 2026. The August 5, 2026 share price, the Form 4 disposition, the 52-week low and the market capitalization are per The Motley Fool (Robert Izquierdo, August 8, 2026). The Andro Capital reporting, Representative Robert Garcia’s letter and StubHub’s statement are per Fortune (Diane Brady, July 27, 2026). Published estimates of Baker’s ownership stake differ substantially between Forbes, TechCrunch and subsequent filings coverage, so no single figure is asserted here.
