StubHub and its founder, CEO and chairman, Eric Baker, are facing a proposed class action that centers on the company’s relationships with large-scale ticket resellers.
The suit alleges that StubHub deceived buyers by marketing itself as a neutral “marketplace for fans to buy and sell tickets” while its own CEO holds a financial stake in one of the professional sellers that supply the platform.
It was filed on Monday (July 13) in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. You can read it in full here.
The complaint was brought by Louis Sanquini, a New York resident, individually and on behalf of a proposed nationwide class of StubHub buyers.
According to the filing, Baker is a part-owner and managing director of Andro Capital, which the suit describes as a professional ticket reseller that has sold tickets through StubHub since 2008.
The complaint says StubHub has earned fees from Andro‘s sales, has at times owed Andro millions of dollars in ticket proceeds, and paid an Andro affiliate approximately USD $1.6 million in 2023 in connection with ticket inventory.
It further alleges that in 2024, StubHub struck an arrangement with Colloquy Capital, an Andro affiliate, to refer sellers for short-term financing to fund bulk ticket purchases for resale on the platform.
None of those relationships was disclosed to consumers at the point of purchase, in StubHub‘s marketing, or in its terms of service, the suit says.
The complaint says StubHub tells the public in its marketing and in response to press inquiries that it ‘does not own, possess, or sell tickets’ and is merely ‘a technology platform that connects independent buyers and sellers,’ while its SEC filings disclose the CEO’s stake in Andro.
The failure to disclose the arrangement, “while affirmatively marketing StubHub as a fan-to-fan marketplace, deceived Plaintiff and the Class,” the complaint states.
“A reasonable consumer… would consider it material that the CEO of a self-described neutral ‘marketplace for fans‘ personally profits from, and that the marketplace itself helps finance, the professional resale operations that supply much of its own ticket inventory,” the filing states.
Industry researchers estimate that so-called mass scalpers account for as much as 70 to 80 percent of ticket inventory on major secondary platforms, including StubHub, according to the complaint.
“A reasonable consumer… would consider it material that the CEO of a self-described neutral ‘marketplace for fans‘ personally profits from, and that the marketplace itself helps finance, the professional resale operations that supply much of its own ticket inventory.”
Class Action Complaint
The suit sets out four counts, including fraudulent concealment, unjust enrichment, and violation of New York‘s consumer-protection statutes.
It seeks compensatory, statutory, and restitutionary damages, and says the aggregate amount in controversy exceeds $5 million.
Sanquini‘s claims center on a September 2024 purchase of four tickets to a New York Red Bulls v. New York City FC match, for which the filing says he paid $131.48 for the tickets plus $76.34 in service and delivery fees.
He also bought two tickets to a KISS concert at Madison Square Garden in December 2023, the complaint says, adding that his claims concern the platform’s pricing and disclosures rather than any failure to deliver tickets.
The lawsuit followed a CBC News investigation published on July 10 that drew on StubHub‘s SEC filings to report that Baker runs a fund selling tickets on the platform he controls.
StubHub told CBC that the information had been fully disclosed in its public SEC filings and that it had nothing to add beyond them.
The proposed class excludes claims over tickets that were never delivered, canceled, or invalid, which the filing says are the subject of separate litigation, including a case captioned Moghal v. StubHub in the same court.
StubHub’s September 2025 IPO on the New York Stock Exchange priced at $23.50 a share and raised about $800 million.
The related-party disclosures the suit relies on appear in the SEC paperwork filed ahead of that listing, which also detailed earlier disputes over StubHub’s pricing.
Those included Wang v. StubHub, a California “drip pricing” case the company said it settled in late 2022, and a 2024 co, from the Attorney General of the District of Columbia over its pricing features.
In April 2026, StubHub agreed to pay $10 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it had advertised ticket prices without disclosing mandatory fees up front, in breach of the agency’s Fees Rule.
In June 2026, Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority fined StubHub UK about GBP £900,000 (USD $1.2 million) and ordered it to refund more than 50,000 customers over undisclosed fees.
The company had also drawn scrutiny after canceling thousands of 2026 World Cup ticket orders, CBC reported, prompting complaints to regulators in the US and Canada.
The suit lands as US regulators sharpen their focus on ticket scalping.
In March 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to enforce competition laws against scalping and to press for price transparency in the secondary market.
That order leaned on the BOTS Act, the 2016 law banning the use of bots to buy up tickets for resale.
In September 2025, the FTC sued Live Nation and Ticketmaster, accusing the company of profiting from scalpers by turning a blind eye to buyers who exceeded ticket limits.
A month earlier, the agency had sued Maryland-based broker Key Investment Group, alleging a scheme that generated about $64 million in secondary-market sales by circumventing Ticketmaster‘s purchase limits.
StubHub processed approximately $9.2 billion in ticket transactions in 2025, according to the complaint, which argues the proposed class runs to many thousands of buyers.
The company has maintained that its ties to Andro Capital are set out in its public SEC filings.Music Business Worldwide
