GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen Is Going Big With Unsolicited Offer To Buy eBay for $56 Billion
A Wall Street Journal scoop lit a fire under GameStop and eBay stock prices on Friday, but anonymous sourcing and light details raised questions about whether a potential deal for the retailer to buy the ecommerce marketplace made sense.
But now further reporting from WSJ's Lauren Thomas puts GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen on the record, adding more details to bolster credibility as some analysts still question the move.
According to WSJ, Cohen said he is making an unsolicited offer to buy eBay for about $56 billion, seeing a path to make the ecommerce company into "something worth hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Cohen says GameStop has built a roughly 5% stake in eBay and will offer $125 a share in cash and stock, a roughly 20% premium to its closing price on Friday, with a commitment letter from TD Bank to provide around $20 billion in debt financing to help make a deal possible.
“I’m going to be as focused on eBay and as personally involved as I have been in the GameStop turnaround for the next few years,” Cohen said.
GameStop followed the exclusive interview with WSJ with a press release laying out important details of their bid, calling out stalled buyer stats and lazy, inefficient spending under current leadership.
eBay spent $2.4 billion on Sales & Marketing in fiscal 2025 while only adding one million net active buyers (134M to 135M - a net increase of less than 0.75%).
GameStop will deliver $2 billion of annualized cost reductions within twelve months of closing:
- ~$1.2 billion from Sales & Marketing. More spend is not producing more users on a marketplace with near-universal brand recognition.
- ~$300 million from Product Development. Product Development expense grew 11% in fiscal 2025 against revenue growth of 8%.
- ~$500 million from General & Administrative. Consolidated finance, HR, real estate, legal, IT, and professional services across the combined company.
On cost reductions alone, eBay’s diluted GAAP earnings per share from continuing operations would increase from $4.26 to $7.79 in year one. GameStop’s ~1,600 US locations give eBay a national network for authentication, intake, fulfillment, and live commerce.
GameStop had ~$9.4 billion in cash and liquid investments as of January 31, 2026.
The cash consideration will be funded from cash and liquid investments on GameStop’s balance sheet and third-party equity and debt financing, which will be fully committed at execution of definitive documentation. A highly-confident letter from TD Securities for up to $20 billion is attached.
Cohen isn't wrong about the anemic buyer growth - in fact, eBay has now had 16 consecutive quarters with less Active Buyers than Q1 2018.
Note: eBay changed the definition of GMV and Active Buyers at the end of 2021 and restated both figures going back to 2018 (chart reflects restated figures per eBay's amended reports.)
The official offer to eBay closed out saying if accepted, Cohen will serve as CEO - he owns ~9% of GameStop and receives no salary, no cash bonuses, and no golden parachute and will be compensated solely based on the performance of the combined company.
If eBay isn’t receptive to the proposal, Cohen is prepared to run a proxy fight and take his offer directly to shareholders.
But eBay has been picking up steam on its own, posting double-digit GMV growth in Q4 2025 and Q1 2026, which has left some analysts wondering why eBay would want to disrupt things now.
Even if Cohen is able to secure additional financing to make this deal happen, the prospects for a heavily leveraged combined entity would remain extremely challenging.
There's also the obvious question of where eBay's already in process $1.2B acquisition of Depop will land if a GameStop takeover bid moves forward.
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 will almost certainly also introduce additional scrutiny - and friction - into any transaction involving a sale of the company itself.
Liz Morton
Those M&A due diligence concerns stemmed largely from eBay's 2023 acquisition of collectible card game marketplace TCGPlayer, which expanded eBay's physical, labor-centric workforce and led to the first union in company history - later broken up when eBay moved operations from New York to Kentucky.
Liz Morton
On the plus side, Cohen's retail and logistics experience could be just what eBay needs to figure out how to do physical, labor-centric operations and fulfillment right - but moving the historically asset-light platform even further in that direction will not be easy, or cheap.
While many commenting on this news rightly point out that TCGPlayer and Goldin Auctions (which eBay acquired in 2024) would be a perfect fit for GameStop, that fit also increases the potential for regulatory scrutiny.
eBay's TCGPlayer purchase raised competition concerns at the time, which would only be enhanced by a GameStop deal.
Liz Morton
And while neither eBay nor GameStop own trading card grader PSA, they both have extensive business partnerships with the company, making recent developments around legal challenges to PSA parent company Collectors Holdings acquisitions of SGC and Beckett relevant to any potential GameStop eBay deal.
Liz Morton
eBay did not respond to request for comment as of time of publishing.
