Executive Summary / Key Takeaways

• Eventbrite is executing a strategic transformation from a ticketing platform to a two-sided marketplace, aiming to drive demand and enhance unit economics despite near-term revenue mix headwinds from eliminating organizer fees.
• Recent performance shows improving paid ticket volume trends, with Q1 2025 down 7.7% year-over-year, a sequential improvement from prior quarters, and management expects a return to growth in the second half of 2025.
• The company's strategic focus on high-value creators, enhanced consumer discovery via a new app, and growth in Eventbrite Ads (up 30% YoY in Q1 2025) are key levers for future growth and marketplace monetization.
• Financial discipline has led to five consecutive quarters of operating expense reductions as of Q1 2025, contributing to positive Adjusted EBITDA despite revenue pressures, and the company maintains a strong liquidity position.
• While facing competition from scaled players like Live Nation (LYV) and specialized platforms like Vivid Seats (SEAT), Eventbrite's differentiated technology, focus on creator tools (e.g., timed entry, AI), and established network effects position it to compete by driving demand and fostering loyalty in its target segments.

The Evolution of Eventbrite: Building a Marketplace for Live Experiences

Eventbrite, Inc. (NYSE:EB), founded in 2003, has long been a prominent platform for event creators to sell tickets and manage their events. Operating a two-sided marketplace, the company connects millions of creators and consumers globally, facilitating a wide array of live experiences. While historically known primarily as a self-service ticketing tool, Eventbrite is undergoing a significant strategic transformation aimed at evolving into a more dynamic consumer marketplace focused on driving demand and enhancing the value proposition for both sides.

This evolution is critical in a competitive landscape characterized by scaled players like Live Nation Entertainment with its Ticketmaster platform, secondary market giants like eBay (EBAY) via StubHub, specialized ticketing providers such as Vivid Seats, and even broader experience platforms like Airbnb (ABNB). While Live Nation dominates large-scale events and secondary markets offer liquidity, Eventbrite has carved out a niche, particularly in the mid-market and independent creator space. Its competitive strategy is shifting from being a commoditized ticketing provider to a partner in demand generation, leveraging its scale and consumer base to help creators sell more tickets. This is a crucial pivot, as creators consistently cite connecting with their audience and driving attendance as their top priority.

Central to Eventbrite's strategy is its differentiated technology platform. The company offers a comprehensive suite of self-service tools designed for ease of use, enabling creators to plan, promote, and sell tickets efficiently. Recent technological advancements highlight this focus. The new timed entry solution, launched in late 2024, provides creators with greater control over managing attendee flow for session-based events, opening up new market segments like attractions and frequently occurring experiences. This feature is gaining traction, with creators adopting it generating nearly 400,000 tickets as of late 2024, and the segment growing nearly 40% by Q1 2025. This capability directly addresses a need for specific event types and expands Eventbrite's addressable market beyond traditional event formats.

Furthermore, Eventbrite is integrating artificial intelligence into its platform. AI event creation tools are helping new creators publish events in one-third less time while generating more ticket sales. AI-powered trending tags identify local event themes in real-time, enabling the creation of unique, hyper-local event collections for curated discovery. These technological enhancements aim to streamline the creator workflow, improve event visibility, and ultimately drive higher conversion rates, offering tangible benefits over less integrated or more manual competitive alternatives.

On the consumer side, the company is prioritizing the mobile app experience. Mobile app users are significantly more engaged and retentive, being three times more likely to buy a ticket than web users. Average monthly app users were up 13% year-over-year in Q1 2025, and paid tickets generated from the app increased by 11%. A reimagined mobile app, launched in Q1 2025, focuses on personalization, discoverability, and social connection, aiming to make Eventbrite a go-to destination for finding live experiences. This investment in the consumer interface is designed to build loyalty and drive repeat purchases, strengthening the demand side of the marketplace flywheel.

The company's history provides context for its current strategic responses. A notable period of disruption involved the introduction of organizer-side listing fees in Q3 2023, which negatively impacted the acquisition and retention of smaller creators and contributed to paid ticket volume headwinds. Recognizing this friction, Eventbrite eliminated these fees in September 2024, returning to a free tier for event publishing and focusing on monetizing through value-added services like Eventbrite Ads and enhanced marketing tools. This pricing reset, while creating a near-term revenue mix headwind, is intended to rebuild event supply and creator engagement, which are foundational to marketplace health.

Performance Reflecting Transition and Strategic Focus

Eventbrite's recent financial performance reflects this period of strategic transition and operational focus. In the first quarter of 2025, the company reported net revenue of $73.8 million, landing at the high end of its guidance range. This represented a 14% decrease year-over-year, primarily attributed to the expected impact of eliminating organizer fees. Despite the revenue decline, the company achieved Adjusted EBITDA of $4.6 million, resulting in a 6.2% margin, also at the upper end of guidance and marking the fifteenth consecutive quarter of positive Adjusted EBITDA.

Operational metrics show signs of recovery following the pricing adjustments. Paid ticket volume in Q1 2025 was 19.6 million, down 7.7% year-over-year. Crucially, this marked the third consecutive quarter of improving year-over-year trends, showing a slower decline compared to Q4 2024 (down 10%) and Q3 2024 (down 14%). This sequential improvement in paid ticket trends, alongside improvements in paid transacting creators and paid event volume, suggests the pricing reset is having the desired effect on supply.

Gross profit in Q1 2025 was $49.4 million, resulting in a gross margin of 67%. This was a contraction from 71% a year prior, as anticipated, due to the loss of higher-margin organizer fee revenue. However, the company's focus on cost discipline is evident in operating expenses, which were down 14% year-over-year in Q1 2025, representing the fifth consecutive quarter of OpEx reductions. Product development expenses decreased from $26.7 million to $20.9 million, and general and administrative expenses fell from $21.2 million to $16.7 million, primarily due to reduced personnel costs and professional services spend. Sales, marketing, and support expenses saw a modest increase from $20.9 million to $21.5 million, reflecting strategic investment in the sales organization aimed at acquiring high-value creators.

Marketplace monetization, particularly through Eventbrite Ads, is a key growth driver offsetting some of the ticketing revenue pressure. Eventbrite Ads revenue grew 30% year-over-year in Q1 2025, building on 83% growth for the full year 2024. Creators using ads sell significantly more tickets, demonstrating the product-market fit for this demand-generation tool. The company is focused on expanding ad placements and improving targeting to enhance ROI for creators.

Liquidity remains a strength. As of March 31, 2025, Eventbrite held $502.9 million in cash and cash equivalents, $36.3 million in funds receivable, and $48.0 million in restricted cash (established in 2024 to manage refund/chargeback risks). Available liquidity, after accounting for creator payables, stood at $241 million, an increase from the end of 2024. While a significant portion of cash ($319.4 million) represents ticket proceeds due to creators, the company's consistent positive Adjusted EBITDA and available liquidity provide a solid financial foundation. The company is managing its debt maturities, having repurchased $120 million of its 2025 Convertible Notes in Q3 2024 and is evaluating options for the remaining 2025 and 2026 maturities, prioritizing non-dilutive alternatives.

Competitive Dynamics and Strategic Positioning

Eventbrite operates in a highly competitive environment. While Live Nation's Ticketmaster dominates the primary market for large-scale events and has superior operational scale and efficiency (e.g., faster processing), Eventbrite's strength lies in its broad reach across diverse event categories and its deep relationships with independent and mid-market creators. Eventbrite's platform is designed for ease of use and offers integrated marketing tools that can drive higher user engagement and retention among independent creators compared to more transactional platforms like eBay's StubHub or even Live Nation's self-serve options.

However, Eventbrite faces challenges. Its financial performance, while improving on profitability metrics like Adjusted EBITDA margin (6.2% in Q1 2025), still lags behind more profitable competitors like eBay (75% gross margin, 25% operating margin in 2024) and Live Nation (28% gross margin, 12% operating margin in 2024). Vivid Seats, while smaller, shows faster revenue growth (15% YoY in Q4 2024) and positive operating margins (10%). Eventbrite's higher R&D investment (28% of revenue in Q1 2025) is aimed at closing technological gaps and driving innovation (like timed entry and AI tools), but translating this into superior operational efficiency and profitability compared to competitors remains a key challenge.

The company's strategic focus on high-value creators (those with 100-1,000 attendees) is crucial. These creators are the most monetizable cohort, drive higher quality event supply, and are more likely to adopt value-added services like Eventbrite Ads and timed entry. The sales team is specifically targeting this segment, with new bookings showing strong growth in Q1 2024. Win-back campaigns targeting creators lost during the pricing changes are also showing early success, bringing back thousands of creators and generating significant ticket volume.

Customer concentration, particularly the reliance on creators for event supply and revenue, is a potential vulnerability. However, the marketplace strategy aims to mitigate this by building a stronger consumer brand and driving demand, making the platform more valuable to creators and less susceptible to churn based solely on pricing or features. The growth in consumer discovery users and mobile app engagement supports this effort.

Outlook and Path Forward

Eventbrite's outlook for 2025 reflects a year of transition, heavily influenced by the full-year impact of the organizer fee elimination. The company expects full-year 2025 net revenue in the range of $295 million to $310 million, with an Adjusted EBITDA margin in the mid-single digits. This guidance incorporates an estimated $20 million revenue headwind from the deprecated organizer fees compared to 2024 and the budgeting for an annual performance bonus.

For the second quarter of 2025, the company anticipates net revenue between $70 million and $73 million and an Adjusted EBITDA margin of 3% to 4%. Management attributes the sequential declines in Q2 revenue and margin to factors like the timing of Easter, shifts in larger planned events, and typical seasonal lower ticket prices.

Despite these near-term pressures, management is confident in the underlying business trajectory. The improving trend in paid ticket volume is expected to continue, with a return to year-over-year growth anticipated in the second half of 2025. Eventbrite Ads is also expected to continue its growth trajectory. The strategic focus on expanding consumer reach, deepening creator engagement (especially with high-value creators), and strengthening marketplace monetization are the key drivers expected to fuel this recovery and set the stage for future growth.

Key risks to this outlook include the potential impact of macroeconomic conditions on consumer spending and creator activity, which could affect ticket volume and chargeback/refund reserves. The inherent uncertainty in tax and legal matters also poses potential financial risks. However, the company's strong liquidity position provides a buffer against unexpected challenges.

Conclusion

Eventbrite is navigating a pivotal period of transformation, shifting its identity from a pure ticketing provider to a vibrant two-sided marketplace focused on driving demand for live experiences. While the elimination of organizer fees presents a significant near-term revenue and margin headwind, the strategic intent is to rebuild event supply and creator engagement, which are fundamental to long-term marketplace health.

Recent performance indicates that this strategy is beginning to yield results, with paid ticket volume trends showing sequential improvement and key growth drivers like Eventbrite Ads demonstrating strong momentum. The company's investment in technological differentiation, particularly in creator tools like timed entry and enhancing the consumer app experience, is crucial for attracting and retaining users in a competitive market.

The 2025 outlook reflects the transitional nature of the year, with revenue and margin impacts from the pricing changes. However, the expectation of a return to paid ticket volume growth in the second half of the year, coupled with continued cost discipline and growth in marketplace monetization, provides a potential path towards improved financial performance in 2026 and beyond. For investors, the story centers on Eventbrite's ability to successfully execute this marketplace transformation, leveraging its established network effects and technological advancements to drive sustainable, profitable growth despite the challenges posed by larger, more financially robust competitors. The trajectory of paid ticket volume and the continued adoption of Eventbrite Ads will be critical indicators to monitor as the year progresses.