President of the most powerful ticketing company in U.S.
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President of the most powerful ticketing company in U.S.

Chris Tsakalakis is an e-commerce executive the president of StubHub, the most powerful secondary ticketing enterprise in America and general manager of eBay Tickets. He is named as one of the most influential executives in the ticketing industry.

His parents came from Naxos and Samos and moved to Chicago in 1967. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1989 with a Bachelors of Science degree in Economics. He worked as a management consultant at Bain & Company in Boston.

Using his Greek/EU passport he went to the London office to work on privatization in Poland and Russia before working in the UK.

His career in e-commerce began in 1996 when he moved to San Francisco. In 2003 he joined eBay as an executive of eBay Marketplaces. During his time at eBay, the eBay Stores subscriber base grew from 50,000 to over 260,000.

He became president of StubHub in 2007, leading the company to become the world’s largest ticket marketplace and a leading sports and entertainment sponsor with more than 90 partnerships internationally.

In 2011 and 2012 he was listed in Sports Business Journal ’s list of the 50 most influential people in the sports business, the Billboard Power 100 lists of most influential people in 2012 and 2013, and also the Huffington Post Sports Game Changer lists for 2010 and 2011.

“I try to take my family to Greece every other year. The little patch of beach behind my parents’ house in Samos, is my favorite. It’s not fancy but it makes me feel like I’m at home. After staying in upscale hotels in Crete, Naxos and Athens this summer, my boys kept saying “this isn’t as nice as Samos” and I had to agree!” said Tsakalakis in a recent interview.

Tsakalakis is a member of the Young Presidents Organization and serves on the board of the Bay Area division of the American Heart Association.

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