eBay set to stop selling second hand tickets to drive StubHub
AUCTION website eBay is set to ditch its ticket-reselling service in the UK in a bid to encourage customers to use StubHub, the struggling second-hand ticket exchange it owns.
The company bought StubHub for $310m (£195m) in January 2007 and has seen the US business succeed. However, since StubHub.co.uk’s launch in March last year, the website has struggled to establish a significant share of the market.
eBay, which is the biggest seller of second-hand music and sports tickets in the UK, will hope that directing shoppers onto StubHub will move some of the hundreds of thousands of tickets it sells a year to the service.
StubHub takes 25 per cent of each sale, in exchange for running a service it claims filters out fraudulent tickets, due to partnerships with ticket sellers such as football clubs. The system is designed to protect shoppers from the huge numbers of fake tickets being sold on the internet.
eBay, which takes a smaller cut of sales, has faced criticism for not doing enough to filter out fake merchandise. Other services, such as viagogo have been blasted for failing to guarantee real tickets, while MPs have called for price caps on resales.
eBay will start encouraging shoppers to use StubHub by placing adverts this week, and will redirect users from the spring.