StubHub Draws Interest From Vivid Seats and KKR

(Bloomberg) -- StubHub, the ticket marketplace EBay Inc. is selling, has drawn interest from suitors including rival Vivid Seats LLC and buyout firm KKR & Co., according to people familiar with the matter.

Silver Lake is weighing a bid for StubHub, which could fetch about $3 billion, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the matter isn’t public. The sale process has begun in recent weeks, they said. No decision has been made and the suitors may opt to not proceed with offers, they said.

EBay in March announced a strategic review of assets including StubHub and its Classifieds Group in conjunction with a settlement agreement with activist investors Starboard Value and Elliott Management Corp., which had called for the sale or spinoff of those two divisions. EBay hasn’t yet decided if or when to proceed with a sale process for the Classifieds business, the people said.

Representatives for EBay, KKR and Vivid Seats declined to comment. A representative for Silver Lake didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Chicago-based Vivid Seats is backed by the private equity firms GTCR and Vista Equity Partners.

EBay fell 1.4% to close at $39.74 in New York trading Tuesday, giving the San Jose, California-based company a market value of about $33.3 billion. The shares have risen about 14% in the past year.

StubHub, which lets people buy and sell tickets to concerts and sporting events online, had $1.1 billion in net transaction revenue in 2018, an increase of 6% from a year earlier, according to EBay’s most recent annual report. EBay bought it for $310 million in 2007.

Classifieds had about $1 billion in revenue during that same time period, an increase of 14% from a year before. Classifieds, which operates under brands including Mobile.de, Kijiji and Gumtree, helps people list various products and services, often for free.

(Adds interest from Silver Lake in second graph.)

--With assistance from Liana Baker.

To contact the reporters on this story: Kiel Porter in Chicago at kporter17@bloomberg.net;Scott Deveau in New York at sdeveau2@bloomberg.net;Gillian Tan in New York at gtan129@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Daniel Hauck at dhauck1@bloomberg.net, Matthew Monks

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