You're right. He said he was switching from PayPal as the payment processor to Eventbrite.

We used PayPal for our first event, but their extra cut on top of Eventbrite's made little sense, so we too switched to using Eventbrite's processor and haven't looked back.

You have to wait until the event is over to get the money, right? It seemed to me that with PayPal, if it didn't get frozen, the author of the article would have gotten his money before the event started and been able to use it to pay for the event's expenses.

Yes, you get the money after the event is over. 5 days after, actually, as that's the timeframe Eventbrite gives you to handle any refunds.