U.K. Regulator Orders Pause on Viagogo, StubHub Merger
February 10 2020 - 8:22AM
Dow Jones News
By Joe Hoppe
A U.K. regulator said Monday that it has served an initial
enforcement order on eBay Inc.'s (EBAY) agreed sale of StubHub to
Viagogo Entertainment Inc.
The U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority served the order on
Feb. 7 while it investigates a deal that would see StubHub sold to
Geneva-based Viagogo for $4.05 billion.
The order requires Viagogo and StubHub to continue to operate
independently for an unspecified amount of time.
StubHub and smaller rival Viagogo are already among the largest
players in the growing secondary market for sports, music and
live-entertainment tickets, in which brokers and fans resell
tickets.
While StubHub and Viagogo are both big online ticket resellers,
StubHub is mostly present in North America, whereas Viagogo is a
significant competitor internationally--particularly in the U.K.
and Europe.
The deal would give the companies, which together sell hundreds
of thousands of tickets daily across more than 70 countries, the
benefit of scale in a $10 billion global resale market.
Write to Joe Hoppe at joseph.hoppe@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 10, 2020 08:07 ET (13:07 GMT)
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