👋 Hi, it’s CJ Gustafson and welcome to Mostly Metrics, my weekly newsletter where I unpack how the world’s best CFOs and business experts use metrics to make better decisions.

StubHub’s ~20% take rate isn’t just a grab for margin — it bundles in buyer and seller fees, payment processing, and fulfillment. That makes it one of the most premium-priced consumer marketplaces, and it wears that badge with pride.

This isn’t a post-COVID sugar high either. StubHub is showing scaled, sustainable growth. Revenue is growing faster than GTV, FCF is tracking close to EBITDA, and any margin compression is from reinvestment, not operational rot.

Importantly, this is a marketplace with real unit economics. Unlike others still dependent on VC subsidies to bait users with discounts, StubHub’s value prop isn’t cheap tickets — it’s a curated, reliable experience for limited-supply events. You’re not bargain-hunting here like you are with rideshares or food delivery. You’re securing access.

StubHub isn’t just converting intent — it’s monetizing repeat behavior. The flywheel’s spinning, and users keep coming back. Speaking of that…

StubHub is a classic two-sided marketplace. Sellers list tickets. Buyers search, click, and purchase. StubHub charges both sides a fee — without ever holding inventory. Not a bad place to be.

It’s a scalable model: no inventory risk, low capex, high margin. And as more buyers show up, more sellers follow — reinforcing liquidity, selection, and pricing transparency.

StubHub isn’t Craigslist for concerts — it’s a full-stack platform with discovery, fulfillment, and monetization built in. That’s how it supports premium fees and strong margins.

Stubhub’s GTM is built on brand, buyer urgency, and SEO muscle.

StubHub’s growth engine isn’t outbound sales — it’s intent capture. The company wins by being the default destination when someone types “Taylor Swift tickets” into Google.

StubHub doesn’t need to sell tickets — it just needs to be there when the buyer’s ready.

A global, recurring spend category with secular tailwinds.

It’s a massive category that’s becoming more digital, global, and monetizable — StubHub is built for that shift.

A high-margin marketplace that’s throwing off cash.

StubHub’s not a growth-at-all-costs story. It’s a mature, asset-light business with real margins and real cash flow.

Despite modest EBITDA compression, StubHub scaled revenue while remaining profitable — a sign the unit economics are working.

StubHub doesn’t have Etsy’s vertical or Airbnb’s brand halo — but it holds its own on margins and beats peers like Eventbrite on scale and monetization.

(SeatGeek numbers are estimates based on publicly available information)

StubHub processes tens of millions of high-intent transactions every year. This isn’t episodic revenue — it’s habitual behavior built on emotional urgency.

Fees on both sides, fulfillment included — and buyers keep paying. That’s pricing power + brand trust. Despite being the “middleman”, they really control the transaction.

14% FCF margin on $1.77B in revenue. Rare air for consumer marketplaces.

Paired with 29% revenue growth.

Even stronger “Rule Of” if you’re one of those psychos who uses EBITDA % instead of FCF % (I’ll die on this hill).

Going upstream to own ticket issuance. Risky, but could unlock new margin layers.

Like an exchange, it routes demand to maximize velocity and take — without inventory risk.

With perishable inventory, velocity matters more than visits. StubHub wins on sell-through.

Not to state the obvious - but a ticket to Taylor Swift the next day is worth $0.

Identity, nostalgia, status. Buying a ticket isn’t rational — it’s personal.

StubHub isn’t just checkout — it’s discovery. That top-of-funnel power matters.

They know who you are, what you like, and when you buy — and they use it. Their user graph is extremely valuable, and leads to compounding knowledge at the point of purchase.

Fraud, fulfillment, and CS scale better than you think. SG&A flattens with volume.

Future upside in seller payouts, buyer financing, FX plays. Monetization layers are latent. Everyone wants to be a fintech. Stubhub could actually do it.

Teams may want to go direct, but they can’t match buyer liquidity. Yet.

Eric Baker holds super-voting Class B shares. Institutional investors may squirm.

StubHub paid Baker’s other company ~$1.6M in 2023 for ticket inventory. Disclosed, but not ideal optics.

StubHub let employees sell back equity pre-IPO. The structure created complexity and temporary balance sheet noise.

Let’s assume StubHub is targeting somewhere between $8B and $10B in enterprise value at IPO. If we assume they grow 25% next year (a decrease of ~5% y/y), that would imply ~$2.2B in revenue and a 3.5x to 4.5x NTM revenue multiple. That’s pretty reasonable given their revenue growth and profitability.

These multiples would place StubHub above Uber and Cargurus but below Doordash, Airbnb, and Zillow.

StubHub isn’t a high-growth SaaS play — but it could earn premium marketplace comps if the Street buys the margin story.

StubHub is what happens when a platform captures both demand and emotion. It doesn’t create events — it monetizes access to them. And it’s been doing that, at scale, across categories, for over 20 years.

The question isn’t whether it’s a good business — it is. The question is whether investors believe that brand + trust + conversion = durable cash flows in a fee-sensitive world.

This IPO won’t trade on hype. It’ll trade on execution. The biggest questions are:

In short: StubHub has a lot going for it. But to earn a growth multiple, it’ll need to prove it’s more than just the place people go after a show sells out — it needs to become the default layer for live event commerce, period.

None of this is investment advice. I edit this while watching Ms. Rachel.

TL;DR: Multiples are UP week-over-week.

Top 10 Medians:

Revenue multiples are a shortcut to compare valuations across the technology landscape, where companies may not yet be profitable. The most standard timeframe for revenue multiple comparison is on a “Next Twelve Months” (NTM Revenue) basis.

NTM is a generous cut, as it gives a company “credit” for a full “rolling” future year. It also puts all companies on equal footing, regardless of their fiscal year end and quarterly seasonality.

However, not all technology sectors or monetization strategies receive the same “credit” on their forward revenue, which operators should be aware of when they create comp sets for their own companies. That is why I break them out as separate “indexes”.

Reasons may include:

From a macro perspective, multiples trend higher in low interest environments, and vice versa.

Multiples shown are calculated by taking the Enterprise Value / NTM revenue.

Market Cap fluctuates with share price day to day, while Total Debt and Cash are taken from the most recent quarterly financial statements available. That’s why we share this report each week - to keep up with changes in the stock market, and to update for quarterly earnings reports when they drop.

Historically, a 10x NTM Revenue multiple has been viewed as a “premium” valuation reserved for the best of the best companies.

Companies that can do more with less tend to earn higher valuations.

Three of the most common and consistently publicly available metrics to measure efficiency include:

A few other notes on efficiency metrics:

Decreasing your OPEX relative to revenue demonstrates Operating Leverage, and leaves more dollars to drop to the bottom line, as companies strive to achieve +25% profitability at scale.

The most common buckets companies put their operating costs into are:

All of these are taken on a Gaap basis and therefore INCLUDE stock based comp, a non cash expense.