GameStop Wants eBay? Make It Make Sense
A Wall Street Journal "scoop" has lit a fire under GameStop and eBay stock prices, but does a potential deal for the retailer to buy the ecommerce marketplace really make sense?
Notably, the Journal cited only “people familiar with the matter,” with no sources willing to go on the record, in a paywalled article published after market close on a Friday. That alone should give investors pause.
According to those "people" GameStop has allegedly been building a stake in eBay shares ahead of a potential offer as part of CEO Ryan Cohen’s plan to turn the retailer into a $100-billion+ giant.
But the idea of GameStop acquiring eBay isn’t new and it’s long been viewed as a stretch.
For months, Cohen has hinted at pursuing a major acquisition to reach that aspirational valuation (which he reportedly has a $35B bonus riding on), and analysts have floated eBay as a potential target since at least early February.
At the time, I dismissed that possibility as unlikely (though admittedly not impossible) as eBay’s market cap is approximately $44.98 billion, roughly four times that of GameStop at approximately $11.89 billion, creating a steep financial hurdle.
That mismatch still matters. Any deal would likely require a heavily stock-based structure (implying significant dilution), aggressive financing, or both. None of those paths are straightforward, especially for a company still in the midst of a strategic turnaround.
Recent developments make the idea even harder to justify.
In mid-February, eBay announced plans to acquire fashion marketplace Depop from Etsy in a $1.2B cash deal, now expected to close by the end of Q3.
Liz Morton
That transaction not only commits capital but also adds integration complexity and pushes out the timeline for meaningful returns.
According to eBay’s Q1 2026 earnings, Depop is not expected to be accretive to non-GAAP operating income until 2028.
Liz Morton
eBay is already in the middle of executing a long-term strategic bet. Layering a full-scale acquisition of the company on top of that would complicate both the financial math and any potential synergy story for GameStop.
There’s also a regulatory wrinkle that shouldn’t be overlooked.
eBay remains under a 3 year enhanced compliance monitoring order tied to its 2024 deferred prosecution agreement with the DOJ, after being found criminally liable for a 2019 harassment campaign targeting journalists Ina and David Steiner of EcommerceBytes.
Liz Morton
That agreement includes a notable emphasis on M&A due diligence. While primarily intended to govern eBay’s own acquisitions, it would almost certainly introduce additional scrutiny - and friction - into any transaction involving a sale of the company itself.
Liz Morton
And apparently I'm not the only one scratching my head over this news.
Paul Nary, an Assistant Professor of M&A Strategy at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania publicly questioned how such a deal could make sense.
Excuse me, what? GameStop $GME to bid for eBay? Huh?
— Paul Nary (@ProfPaulNary) May 1, 2026
Add this to my “I’m an M&A professor and I don’t understand this deal” file (ok it’s more of a “I’m highly skeptical about how this makes any sense” file) https://t.co/7AJlpapld6
CNBC’s Fast Money hosts appeared similarly puzzled, struggling to reconcile the report with the underlying fundamentals.
To be clear, none of this makes a deal impossible, but it does raise the bar considerably.
Time will tell whether there’s anything behind the Journal’s reporting. But for now, this looks more like speculative momentum than a well-grounded M&A thesis.
Or, to borrow from eBay itself: just because someone can make an offer doesn’t mean it will be accepted.
GameStop and eBay did not respond to requests for comment as of publication.
Disclosure: Value Added Resource does not own stock in any of the companies covered and this article is not intended to be financial advice.
