The Register® — Biting the hand that feeds IT

eBay scalps StubHub

Ticketed attractions

Hitachi IT Operations Analyzer: 30-day free trial.

eBay is buying StubHub, the San Francisco sports, music and theater tickets reseller for $310m. It gets a rebate though - StubHub brings with it a dowry of $25m in net cash.

StubHub has created an online after-market for events tickets, which turns over around $400m a year in ticket sales, from which it clips $10m in profits, according to reports. It describes itself as the "fan's ticket marketplace", where buyers and sellers trade tickets at "fair market value...even to those (events) that are 'sold out.'"

Looking at the site, it is clear that a lot of the activity on the selling side is generated by professional ticketing organisations. In some countries this would be called scalping or touting and would be considered illegal. But obviously not in America.

According to Reuters, eBay tried to buy StubHub once before, in 2002, but the two fell out over the purchase price, said to be $20m.

Oh well. eBay is buying a much bigger company this time around and it has a new platform for PayPal to play with. ®

Free whitepaper – Dell PowerEdge servers 2009 - Memory

Don’t Miss

DustbinDirty, dirty PCs: The X-rated picture guide

Ventblockers Horror beyond human imagination

SC09Top 500 supers - rise of the Linux quad-cores

SC09 Jaguar munches Roadrunner

Ubuntu teaser Early adopters bloodied by Ubuntu's Karmic Koala

Smooth Windows upgrade it ain't

Sign up, sign up for The Register IT security newsletter

Narrowcasting for the email classes