Media & Entertainment: The Impacts of Regulation on Ticketing

Research evidence excerpt

Media & Entertainment: The Impacts of Regulation on Ticketing

FoundationMThe primary factors informing relative revenue exposure include (i) earnings diversification

beyond resale exposure; (ii) concert vertical mix; (iii) geographic exposure; and (iv) relative

take rates. We discuss these below.

Impact to Resale Market

We estimate the resale (or secondary) ticketing industry is a nearly $50bn market

globally. While StubHub is the largest platform, both Ticketmaster (owned by Live

Nation) and Vivid Seats have material share ( Exhibit 3 ). Excluding any potential impact

from regulatory pressures, we see this resale market growing at a healthy MSD-HSD%

CAGR over the next few years.

See our StubHub initiation here for more on our industry growth outlook.

Exhibit 3: StubHub's investment to grow its share has successfully established it as

the largest ticket resale platform globally

2025 Transacted Ticket Value

Global

$9.0bn

Primarily

North

$4.5bn America

$2.2bn

StubHub Ticketmaster Vivid Seats

(Resale)

Source: Company data, Morgan Stanley Research

Which potential regulatory changes matter most for the industry? There are four key

areas of regulatory focus currently: (1) all-in pricing, largely implemented; (2) speculative

ticketing; (3) bots prohibition; and (4) resale price caps. We discuss these in the next

section but here focus on price caps, which we view as the most material.

Price caps involve limiting the listed price of a resale ticket at as little as face value

(including fees) or at a modest (typically 10-20%) premium to that amount. In contrast to

fears that this could meaningfully impair the opportunity of resale platforms, we estimate

it may prove a low-single digit percentage headwind to secondary industry growth if

legislative adoption broadens out.