Over the last week, ticketing platforms have poured out their financial results for Q3.
All saw a boost from the tail end of the FIFA Men’s World Cup, but for the marketplaces without primary connections — Vivid Seats and StubHub — they’re facing pressure to curb drops in inventory transactions and stock prices.
Here’s a quick rundown on the most recent financial returns of Ticketmaster (announced on Thursday via Live Nation’s overall results), Vivid Seats (Monday) and StubHub (Tuesday).
Ticketmaster
In short, Ticketmaster’s numbers trended positively enough to raise expectations for Live Nation’s ticketing business.
The key figures:
- Q3 revenue of $870.3M, leading to a nine-month revenue of $2.49B. Those figures were up 9% and 11%, respectively. (All percentages will be year-over-year comparisons unless otherwise noted).
- Adjusted operating income for the quarter was $315.7M, up 10%.
- The company sold 98.3 million fee-bearing tickets, which was up 13%.
- And one more big one for the Live Nation ecosystem: $450M, the company’s estimated losses for its ongoing federal antitrust case that remains in its arbitration phase.
The sports takeaway:
Live Nation President and CFO Joe Berchtold said that sports helped to lift up the company’s resale figures.
“We had flagged a year or so ago that we thought that there was likely to be some headwinds on the secondary side as we really continue to increase the enforcement on the concert secondary, which we expected to reduce that business,” Berchtold said. “And as we noted, we have some offsets with increased performance on the sports side. So we’re not seeing that headwind for the year.”
The FIFA Men’s World Cup and its schedule also led to later start dates for many bigger touring acts. That will continue to drum up momentum as the likes of Harry Styles and Bruno Mars start their tours, which promoted more ticket purchases this quarter as well.
Ticketmaster has added approximately 23 million net new ticket sales so far this year, with approximately 75% of that coming from international markets.
Vivid Seats
While marketplace gross order value (the amount of money spent on tickets) was up, trends remained downward for the secondary marketplace.
The key figures:
- Marketplace GOV was relatively flat — up 1% to $624M
- Q3 revenue came in at $126.9M, which was down 7%.
- The company saw fewer orders during the quarter — approximately 1.9 million, which was down 11% — even with the FIFA World Cup’s impact at the start of the quarter.
The sports takeaway:
Sports was the big lift for Vivid Seats this quarter. Those events brought in $37.6M, which was up 11%. Everything else (concerts, theater and other categories) declined. CEO Larry Fey added that the company’s performance around the tournament — especially in comparison to StubHub’s struggle to provide tickets to some fans during the event — would hopefully entice fans to return to their marketplace. “We feel like we handled ourselves exceptionally well with the World Cup,” Fey said. “That should pay dividends.”
StubHub
StubHub’s massive market share got help from the World Cup, but that comes with a significant payout cost.
The key figures:
- Gross merchandise sales of $2.62B, which was up 7%.
- Revenue up 7% to $502M.
- A year-to-date revenue of $1.52B, up 17%.
The sports takeaway:
The World Cup, no surprise, led to a few positive upticks. But CEO Eric Baker will likely face a question or two on his investor call about the proposed class action lawsuit filed over ticketing issues around the event, notable for fans who purchased tickets that either never came or were canceled.
The financials accompanied the hire of CFO Michael Noonan, who will start in January for the retiring Connie James. Noonan previously held CFO roles at travel marketplace Tripadvisor and diet/nutrition platform Noom.
StubHub continues to lean into its open distribution as a major pillar of its future, and this hire resonates in a similar fashion.
