StubHub informed employees last week of plans to wind down its operations in San Francisco, California and Shanghai, China by the end of the year, according to a letter from CEO Eric Baker. As part of that plan, the majority of employees in both locations are being laid off by the ticket resale marketplace.

“This is never easy news to share,” Baker wrote in the letter, which was posted to the company’s Linked In page. “We are grateful for the contributions of these employees and wish them well as the go on to their next chapters.”

It is unclear the number of employees impacted by the office closures. According to LinkedIn, 161 employees who list the company as their employer (out of more than 650 in the United States) are indicated as being in the San Francisco Bay area, with another 75 listed in China and 44 in Shanghai City.

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Baker’s regaining control of the company he co-founded has been a rocky process. It was closed just weeks before live entertainment was brought to a screeching halt by the COVID pandemic, and faced tremendous scrutiny from regulators in the UK before it was finally approved after the company agreed to spin off StubHub’s international operations, leaving StubHub in North America as well as its new parent company Viagogo operating on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. More recently, the integration of technological systems led to major issues for buyers and sellers alike, but those issues appear to have been ironed out, for now.

In the message, Baker indicated that the consolidation move is intended to spur a period of growth for the company as it ramps back up in the post-COVID entertainment ecosystem.

“To the team that remains, it’s growth time,” he wrote. “With Nayaab at the helm as President, we will soon share more news about our plans for the future. We know you will all continue working hard to drive this next phase of growth, and we look forward to continuing to operate in an innovative and fast-paced environment that gets us all excited to tackle challenging problems each day.

“I am excited about the opportunity ahead. The best is yet to come,” he concluded.

The full letter is included below:

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Subject: Business Update

 

Dear StubHub Employees,

 

When I wrote the business plan for StubHub over 20 years ago, I never could have dreamed of all the opportunities that StubHub has today.

 

After replicating StubHub’s model with viagogo in Europe, the best decision I ever made was to buy back this company I created. Since the sale finalized in February of 2020, we have worked tirelessly – navigating the COVID pandemic and jumping over regulatory hurdles – so that we could finally integrate the two businesses. Given the recent migration to one tech stack, StubHub today has the technology and brand, coupled with global scale and operational excellence, to transform the live events industry. Now that we have reached this point, I want to provide an update on our journey.

 

Over the last two years, we have thoughtfully and methodically optimized the integration of our operations to set us up to re-capture market share, grow the industry, and innovate for the customer. Today, we hare focusing on designing our organization for the future we will create together. To that end, we have made the decision to wind down our Shanghai and San Francisco offices by the end of the year, thereby centering our corporate hubs in Los Angeles and New York. This will allow us to be more focused and more nimble going forward.

This is never easy news to share. Those who are impacted by these changes have already been contacted by our People Team about their individual departure plans. We are grateful for the contributions of these employees and wish them well as they go on to their next chapters.

To the team that remains, it’s growth time. Moving forward, our work will focus on in-person participation in our offices around the world, which – in addition to LA and NY – will still include locations in Utah, Switzerland, Ireland and Taiwan.

With Nayaab at the helm as President, we will soon share more news about our plans for the future. We know you will all continue working hard to drive this next phase of growth, and we look forward to continuing to operate in an innovative and fast-paced environment that gets us all excited to tackle challenging problems each day.

I am excited about the opportunity ahead. The best is yet to come.

Baker