eBay ($EBAY) announced plans to sell StubHub to Viagogo ($PRIVATE:VIAGOGO) earlier this week for a cool $4 billion in cold hard cash. Before the sale goes through (next quarter), we wanted to look at the headcount for both companies, and the StubHub data, to figure out why it's so valuable to one and not the other. Viagogo sells tickets, so it's a more natural fit, since eBay is known for auctions and bidding on tickets to Knicks games would be a disaster.
Headcount
The European company might seem small, but that could not be further from the truth. Viagogo is a collection of several websites in many countries, that does big business, especially since it handles FIFA events. But soon it should explode in staff count with the addition of StubHub to its lineup.
eBay, on the other hand, has never been bigger, and undoubtedly there will be a dip with people exiting the StubHub team. Fewer employees and the extra money should help the stock bounce back.
StubHub data
StubHub, a competitor to the likes of Ticket Master and Live Nation ($LYV) has its niche market on lockdown, and can be heard advertising on any podcasts you listen to.
The secret recipe to its success? Possibly the fact that there have been 8 different names for its app on the Apple Store, which allows the average rating to be wiped and erased.
The more times the app gets a slight rebrand, the better the average review becomes. It's at a 5.0 now, which is the goal of any app.
This obviously comes with the addition of more improvements to the app over time, but the same case is found on Android. Not as many times over, but still, the same playbook is being used to make it look better and more appealing to newcomers.
In this case, it helped get the average rating to above the 4.0 threshold. This happened earlier this year, after its third name on the Google Play Store.
So to bring it full circle to the headline, Viagogo is a better fit for StubHub, and StubHub is a brand that will do whatever it takes to improve itself or at least make it seem like its apps are improving.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.