Things have not been going too well lately for auction giant, eBay. A near-botched Skype acquisition, a stinging (and rather expensive $100 million plus) failure in China and Google’s willingness to sacrifice any semblance of profits are just some of the things that have have taken the air out of eBay’s stock.
The San Jose-based company has been getting-by via squeezing (and antagonizing) its merchants and end users. Against such a dismal backdrop, one has to applaud company’s decision to buy e-scalper, StubHub for around $310 million.
This is a deal that makes a lot of sense for eBay since it is a business that is parallel to its core auction business. It is also buying a start-up that is rumored to be doing about $100 million in sales.
The event ticket scalping (that’s exactly what it really is) is a business that is thriving on eBay as well as StubHub. And if you are a sports fanatic like yours truly, you are not going to give up StubHub anytime soon. Good call eBay.
oooh…good title. :-)
well, the accurate interpretation of that headline would mean that they’re buying StubHub at a low price and can later sell to someone else for higher. hmmm…