StubHub expects high demand for live entertainment and sporting events when the global coronavirus pandemic is under control. "The good news is this is eventually going to dissipate, right," said StubHub GM of Sports Akshay Khanna. "If you look at what's happening in China, the hope is that things are starting to get back to normal now slowly. So we believe that there is going to be a ramp up both of live events and of demand to go to these live events. And we believe that's going to be pretty spectacular." Khanna said the company had some experience dealing with the challenges of working from home when it put in a work-from-home program for its China office when the virus first hit that country. "It was the right thing to do," Khanna said. "We don't want people going in. Then, of course, we're headquartered here in San Francisco, where there's a shelter-at-home order. So obviously there's no question about anyone going to work from here." The company is providing customers a full refund to canceled events or a coupon valued at 120% of the original purchase price that can be applied toward a future event of their choosing. StubHub also has increased its customer service efforts to deal with cancellations and postponements. "We really ramped up our customer service through all of this, (which) we were already incredibly proud of, but we've further invested in that," Khanna said. "But then you can imagine there's a solid chunk of time being spent on how do we come out of this stronger, how do we capitalize on what has to be a pretty significant demand as the impact of this virus of starts to trail off?"
