U.K. Regulator Orders Pause on Viagogo, StubHub Merger

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 [e-mail]

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 10, 2020 08:07 ET (13:07 GMT)

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