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StubHub posted record quarterly revenue. It also posted essentially zero profit. The culprit: a World Cup ticketing meltdown that left paying customers locked outside stadiums, triggered a wave of lawsuits, and sent the stock tumbling more than 10% in a single session.
Shares of StubHub Holdings fell between 10% and 16% on August 13, the day after the company reported second-quarter 2026 earnings. The results told a split-screen story: $573.1 million in revenue (up 33% year-over-year) paired with a 37% jump in expenses that dragged net income to roughly breakeven. A record top line, effectively erased before it reached the bottom one.
What went wrong
The 2026 FIFA World Cup, hosted across North America, was supposed to be a windfall for ticket resellers. StubHub reported $3.1 billion in gross merchandise sales for the quarter, a 34% year-over-year increase. Demand was enormous.
Delivery was the problem. Starting in June, buyers began receiving notifications, sometimes just hours before kickoff, that their purchased tickets could not be transferred. Fans who had traveled internationally and spent thousands of dollars found themselves standing outside venues with nothing but a confirmation email and a rising sense of fury.
StubHub CEO Eric Baker pointed the finger at FIFA’s own ticketing infrastructure and app, arguing that transfer failures affected multiple resale platforms, not just his. Competitors Vivid Seats and SeatGeek reportedly experienced similar issues.
The expense surge was driven by refund payouts, customer service scaling, and the early costs of mounting legal defense.
Lawsuits are piling up
Multiple lawsuits have been filed in 2026 over ticket delivery failures, including a proposed class action in federal court seeking at least $5 million in damages. A Canadian fan separately filed a class action over $13,000 worth of tickets that were never delivered. The allegations include false advertising and inadequate customer service.
Beyond civil litigation, the Texas Attorney General has opened a regulatory investigation into the company’s practices. Texas hosted several World Cup matches, making it a natural jurisdiction for enforcement action.
The blame game and what comes next
Baker’s public stance, that FIFA’s ticketing system was the root cause, puts StubHub in an awkward position. If the failures were genuinely outside the company’s control, that limits legal liability but also raises a different investor concern: dependence on third-party infrastructure that StubHub cannot vet, fix, or replace.
Investors will be watching several threads in the coming quarters. First, the total financial exposure from pending and future lawsuits. A $5 million class action is manageable on its own, but class actions have a tendency to multiply, and the Texas AG investigation could lead to fines or consent decrees that impose ongoing compliance costs. Second, whether StubHub can negotiate better ticketing infrastructure agreements for future major events, or whether it will continue to rely on systems it doesn’t control.
For now, StubHub’s record revenue quarter will be remembered not for what it earned, but for what it cost.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
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