Monday, July 27, 2026

StubHub CEO Eric Baker is under scrutiny for enabling mass scalpers on his ticket reselling platform

In today’s CEO Daily: StubHub CEO Eric Baker’s hedge fund ties are raising questions
The big leadership story: Trump is running out of options to manage oil prices
The markets: Markets are rising around the world as China has a monster semiconductor trading debut
Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. Ticket resellers have long turned to StubHub to hawk their wares, selling seats to concerts and sports games, often at significant markups. But what happens when the CEO of a platform for ticket resellers turns out to be one himself? Even as Stubhub faces class action lawsuits and investigations over selling World Cup tickets that didn’t exist, its founder Eric Baker is facing scrutiny for his ties to a fund that resells millions of dollars of tickets on the site—and finances other resellers to do the same.

Here’s the issue: In its prospectus to go public last fall, Stubhub noted that one million sellers offloaded 40 million tickets in 2024. The S-1 filing also revealed that Baker is managing director of Andro Capital, a fund that buys tickets in bulk and resells them on the platform. StubHub also pays hefty fees to Andro to help sell and service inventory and refers other resellers to an affiliate of the fund that offers financing for bulk ticket sales. A CBC investigation put a spotlight on the filings amid the uproar over StubHub canceling hundreds, if not thousands, of World Cup tickets. (StubHub has not disclosed the total number.)

On Friday, Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.), ranking member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, demanded answers from Baker, sending him a sharply worded letter asking about his “secret hedge fund” and related businesses. The question, Garcia wrote, is “whether you have manipulated markets for your own benefit, while Americans are left paying higher costs in an unfair system.” (StubHub didn’t respond to my request for comment this weekend but it’s long maintained that it does not own, possess or sell tickets, functioning simply as a marketplace that makes money off transaction fees.)

There’s a long tradition of CEOs expanding into adjacent businesses that let them capture more of the money flowing through their systems. Baker’s role in reselling tickets was, after all, disclosed prior to the IPO. But this is a site that’s been fined for deceptive pricing and is not beloved by those who use it, with low customer net-promoter scores. Resale sites like StubHub solve a problem that they arguably helped to create, giving scalpers an easy way to profit off scooping up tickets that others want to buy. StubHub is about to become a real-time test of how far a CEO can personally benefit from a business before regulators, Congress, and customers decide it’s crossed into self-dealing.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

Top leadership news

Trump has no levers left to pull on oil

U.S. President Donald Trump has limited ability to lower energy prices ahead of November’s midterm elections. The U.S. and the rest of the world have depleted most of their energy reserves, and the administration has already used most of its policy levers, like waiving the Jones Act. Further moves, like a gas tax holiday, will need approval from a splintered Congress. “If we wind up with a de facto closure of the [Strait of Hormuz] and this Houthi threat shuts down the Red Sea, then I think it gets bad pretty fast during August,” said Dan Pickering, founder of the Pickering Energy Partners consulting and research firm.

The government’s stock portfolio is nowhere to be found

The U.S. has invested almost $27 billion in equity and quasi-equity stakes in companies like Intel, MP Materials, and U.S. Steel, yet there is no consolidated ledger detailing the government’s holdings. The stakes are spread across at least four agencies: The Department of Commerce, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy, and the Development Finance Corporation (which is the only agency to hold clear statutory authority to own equity at all).

Ukraine signals wider front in Iran war

The U.S. and Iran have paused their daily attacks on each other, but the war is not on hold. On Saturday, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced that Ukraine attacked a cargo ship ferrying military supplies between Iran and Russia in the Caspian Sea. Kyiv has accused Iran of supply drones to Russia; Iran insists it is not involved in the war in Ukraine.

The markets

S&P 500 futures are up 0.9% this morning. The last session closed up 0.1%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 1.0%, South Korea’s KOSPI is up 1.0%, and Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 0.5%. China’s tech- and startup-focused ChiNext index rose 3.2%. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 1.4%. India’s NIFTY 50 is up 0.9%, while the STOXX Europe 600 rose 0.5% in early trading. Chinese chipmaker CXMT surged by over 460% in its first day of trading, following a $9.8 billion IPO in Shanghai last week; it’s already the most valuable company listed in mainland China. West Texas Intermediate Crude fell 6% to just under $84 per barrel; Bitcoin is hovering just above $65,000.