GameStop wants to buy eBay for $56 billion — and turn its stores into fulfillment hubs
GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen has made an unsolicited $56 billion offer to acquire eBay at $125 per share — a roughly 20% premium to eBay's recent stock price. Cohen has already built a 5% stake in eBay and secured a non-binding $20 billion debt commitment from TD Bank. If the bid succeeds, it would be the most audacious move yet from the man who turned a dying video game retailer into a cash-rich meme-stock phenomenon.
The plan
The pitch is straightforward on paper: convert GameStop's 1,600 U.S. stores into authentication and fulfillment hubs for eBay's marketplace. For categories like collectibles, sneakers, and secondhand electronics — where buyers worry about fakes — physical verification points could add real value. Cohen wants to cut $2 billion in annual costs within 12 months, targeting eBay's $2.4 billion sales and marketing budget, which he argues has delivered almost nothing: eBay's gross merchandise volume slid from $100 billion in 2020 to $79.6 billion in 2025, per CNBC. The combined company, Cohen argues, would be a genuine rival to Amazon.
The gap
The math is the hard part. GameStop's market cap sits around $12 billion. It holds roughly $9.4 billion in cash. TD Bank's $20 billion commitment — described as a "highly confident letter," not a signed deal — brings the accessible total to about $29.4 billion, reports Bloomberg. That leaves a gap of approximately $27 billion. Filling it likely requires either massive stock issuance — heavily diluting existing GameStop shareholders — or financing from sovereign wealth funds, possibly in the Middle East. Neither is simple. Bloomberg Intelligence has assessed the probability of the deal closing as low, and eBay's share price rose only around 13% on the news, well below the 20% premium on offer, signaling that investors aren't convinced it gets done.
What happens next
Cohen has made clear he is prepared to pursue a proxy fight if eBay's board rejects the offer outright. GameStop's retail shareholder base — which holds roughly 42% of the company — could be mobilized to pressure eBay's institutional investors. eBay has not publicly responded. For now, the offer is a formal proposal, not a signed agreement, and a long road of board negotiations, financing, and likely regulatory review lies ahead before anything changes for buyers or sellers on either platform.
