eBay’s secondary ticketing subsidiary StubHub is looking for a new boss, after president Chris Tsakalakis stepped down with immediate effect. StubHub’s North America boss Noah Goldberg and chief financial officer Ajay Gopal will be running the company until a new president is appointed. It’s interesting to see different takes on the news, presumably based on background briefings. TechCrunch notes StubHub’s layoffs of around 100 people in June and suggests that “StubHub’s performance continued to lag behind expectations since then”, while Billboard suggests that the decision was Tsakalakis who felt he had “done it all at StubHub and it was time for a new challenge… Tsakalakis was more of a disrupter of the industry, and as this startup became more integrated into the overall sports and entertainment business – and therefore more corporate – it was less suited to his skill set.” In any case, the resignation leaves StubHub to appoint a new leader at a time when it’s facing more competition than ever in the secondary space. Who the company chooses will be a pointer to its ambition in taking on rivals looking to disrupt the disrupter.
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