StubHub President Transitioning Out, Company Announces Additional Layoffs

Sukhinder Singh
StubHub – Sukhinder Singh

StubHub has announced President Sukhinder Singh Cassidy will transition to an advisory role and Jill Krimmel, currently serving as general manager of North America, will assume the role of interim president beginning June 1. 

The company also confirmed it is restructuring several other leadership roles to lower costs and will further reduce its North American workforce, following a previous round of furloughs in March.

“Given the impact of the coronavirus in the US, we made the difficult decision to create a leaner, more-focused StubHub organization in North America that is reflective of the reshaped live events industry,” a StubHub representative told Pollstar. “Unfortunately, this means that we are eliminating a number of roles across the company. These actions allow StubHub to maintain a lower cost structure and better align it with business volumes that will scale back up over an extended period. In North America, we’re impacting approximately 200 roles, which is roughly aligned to the number of roles we previously furloughed.”

A Stubhub statement says that the company is providing severance payments, outplacement support, ongoing medical, dental and vision benefits, and is allowing impacted employees to keep equipment associated with their work like laptops and phones.

Krimmel said in a statement she is excited to step into the new role and for the future of the company.

“There’s no doubt that this is a challenging time in our space – but it’s also one with an abundance of opportunity,” Krimmel said in a statement. “StubHub is uniquely positioned as a leader in the industry to help facilitate the return of millions of people to live events.

Singh Cassidy said in a statement she had agreed she would be transitioning out of the position after the acquisition by viagogo was finalized. She further explained in an interview with Billboard that “The company doesn’t need two CEOs at either combined company.” That merger, however, has not yet completed as it is being held up over regulatory concerns in the UK, effectively leaving StubHub without a parent company in eBay or viagogo.

The timing could not be worse for the secondary marketplace, as the COVID-19 pandemic has completely shellacked the live entertainment and ticketing industries. The cancellation of virtually all forms of live entertainment forced StubHub to change its refund policy, no longer able to offer cash refunds for canceled events, only company credit worth 120% of the ticket’s value.

Refunds remain a hot topic as SXSW and now Ultra Music Festival are facing lawsuits for refusing to offer customers cash refunds for postponement/cancellation, and Ticketmaster President Jared Smith has gone back and forth with U.S. Reps Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) and Katie Porter (D-CA) over the company’s refund policy.