Photo Credit: Giorgio Trovato
StubHub’s recent financial disclosures are shining new light on a long-standing frustration among small and mid-tier ticket sellers—delayed payouts.
While StubHub officially states that payments to sellers are remitted five to eight business days after an event takes place, the on-the-ground reality seems more complicated. Numerous independent sellers have taken to social media to complain about chasing StubHub support for weeks or months to receive money owed after completed transactions.
During a recent earnings call, StubHub Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Connie James addressed the company’s cash flow mode, offering some insight into how this delay benefits the platform financially. “Our marketplace model has inherent favorable cash flow characteristics,” James told investors. “We collect cash from buyers at the time of purchase, but remit payments to sellers at a later date—often after the event occurs.”
“These cash balances show up on our balance sheet as payments due to sellers. With this timing difference, we earn a yield on these proceed balances. To illustrate, on a trailing 12-month basis, you will see $41 million of interest income on our income statement.”
That underscores a structural incentive for StubHub to maintain sizable outstanding balances, regardless of their stated payment policy. As long as payments to sellers remain unprocessed, StubHub continues earning interest on those funds. A cursory glance at the StubHub subreddit highlights just how many people are left waiting for payments well beyond the stated policy, too.
“StubHub still hasn’t paid me for tickets I sold over three months ago,” one comment reads. “It’s been a long long process and every time I phone them to complain about it I get the same answers that I’ve been approved to be paid and they will escalate. I made sure to get it in writing from them that I’ve been approved for payment but yet still it hasn’t been processed yet.”
Another person said they weren’t paid for tickets they sold until a month later, after StubHub claimed some issue with their bank account. In fact, searching the phrase ‘stubhub not paying’ on the subreddit returns so many results that it’s impossible to catalog them all.
With so many ticket buyers and ticket sellers reporting problems with how the platform operates, how long will this carry on? The company has decided not to provide short-term forecasts for the foreseeable future, which massively spooked investors after the company’s IPO. The company is also facing down several class action lawsuits, which are currently in the info-gathering phase.
