VentureBeat

Some entrepreneurs are bold, or foolhardy, depending how you look at it.

Eric Baker, co-founder of online ticket scalper StubHub, left in 2004, before StubHub went on to sell to eBay in January for $310 million.

Instead, he started rival Viagogo in London in 2005. The company has just raised $30 million in a round led by Index Ventures.

Like Stubhub, Viagogo allows people to buy and sell previously-purchased tickets on the web for sports games, concerts and other live events.

Baker, Viagogo’s chief executive, says he will use the additional funding to go head-to-head with Stubhub in the US, having cashed out his ten percent ownership of Stubhub in the sale to eBay, with no problematic non-compete clause to stop him (previous coverage here).

The online marketplace in the US for buying and selling second-hand tickets is wide open, says Baker — although other established online ticket marketplaces include RazorGator and Tickets Now. Viagogo’s beachhead: A non-exclusive distribution deal with the Cleveland Browns (American) football team.

The total online ticket sales market in the US — including both scalpers’ tickets and tickets sold directly from Ticketmaster or venues themselves — will be worth more than $10 billion within the next few years, says Baker. He cites a Forrester Research study suggesting it was $4.3 billion in 2006, based on 27 percent growth over the previous year.

Viagogo, to its advantage, has a legal lock on some ticket sales in Europe. In England, “hooligan laws” restrict reselling rights to a single vendor in order to keep thuggish fans out of the stands. Viagogo has an exclusive license to re-sell tickets for Manchester United and other world-famous soccer (football) clubs — brands that it hopes will help grow its reputation in the US.

Viagogo will bring in “tens of millions of dollars” in ticket sales this year, according to Baker, although he would not disclose specific revenue or traffic numbers.

However, Ticketmaster is bringing a variety of court cases against online ticket resellers in the US, in hopes of promoting its own service, TicketExchange; it is also being sued by sports teams for doing so.

Besides Index, other investors include LVMH Chairman Bernard Arnault, German media mogul Dr. Herbert Kloiber, and international financier Lord Jacob Rothschild through his family’s interests. Viagogo has previously raised $20 million.

StubHub, an online site for reselling tickets to events, has been acquied by eBay for $310 million, minting the latest Silicon Valley millionaires in co-founders Jeff Fluhr and Eric Baker.

The controversial company has grown steadily, badgering eBay’s business for years. About 30 professional and college sports teams encourage fans to StubHub as a sort of safe haven in the reselling market, even as the New England Patriots have sued the company, saying it is encouraging fans to break anti-scalping laws (StubHub sued back).

Fluhr, 32 (pictured right), and Baker, 33 (pictured left), met as classmates at Stanford’s business school in 2000 and founded the company thereafter. According to Dow Jones (sub required), Fluhr owns 16 to 18 percent of StubHub, while Baker owns 10 percent.

Investors Allen & Co, Blue Water Capital, Pequot Ventures and Staenberg Venture Partners backed the company with a mere $15 million over the years, suggesting a profitable return for everyone.

The company had revenue last year of close to $100 million, and earnings of about $10 million before interest taxes, depreciation and amortization, according to the Dow Jones.

Competing start-up, Razorgator, backed by Kleiner Perkins, is still fighting away. It raised $26 million in 2005.

StubHub’s Baker, meanwhile, recently raised more than $20 million from Index Ventures and others to launch a similar company, Viagogo, to go after the European market.

(Photo credit: Chris Hardy, SF Chron)