GameStop has reportedly put a $55.5bn takeover offer on the table for eBay, an audacious swing from CEO Ryan Cohen that would see the shrinking game retailer swallow one of the internet’s oldest marketplaces.
The proposed deal is roughly half cash and half GameStop stock, splitting the price tag into two chunks of about $27.75bn each. GameStop reportedly holds around $9.4bn in cash, with the rest of the cash portion expected to come through outside financing arranged by TD Securities.
In short, GameStop is trying to buy a company much larger than itself, and most of the money wouldn’t be its own.
Cohen has reportedly pitched the bid with around $2bn in projected cost savings from combining the two businesses. He’s also said to have offered to take no salary, no cash bonus, and no golden parachute, instead tying his pay to the performance of the merged company.
This is a proposal, not a done deal. eBay hasn’t agreed to anything, and any transaction would still need board engagement, shareholder approval, locked-in financing, and regulatory review.
Why GameStop wants eBay
The strategic logic isn’t really about video games. It’s about collectibles.
GameStop has spent the last few years pushing hard into Pokémon cards, sports cards, Funko Pops, and graded hobby products. eBay is one of the largest secondary markets on the planet for exactly that kind of merchandise, and it already owns TCGplayer, the dominant marketplace for trading card games.
Combine eBay’s online traffic with GameStop’s roughly 2,500 physical stores and you get a possible pitch: stores as drop-off points, authentication hubs, return centers, and intake locations for resale inventory. The plan pushes GameStop well beyond used games into a broader recommerce business spanning collectibles, electronics, and hobby goods.
The financing structure is where things get spicy. Funding a deal this large with heavy borrowing has the shape of a leveraged buyout, where debt is piled on and the acquired company’s cash flow helps service it. That works when the cost savings actually happen. It gets ugly fast when they don’t.
From meme stock to mega bidder
GameStop’s ability to even attempt this comes from the 2021 meme-stock frenzy, which let the company raise billions through stock sales while its retail business kept shrinking. Under Cohen, who co-founded Chewy, the company has been closing stores, cutting costs, and sitting on a cash pile that looks strange next to its actual revenue.
eBay, meanwhile, is a profitable marketplace with a market cap that dwarfs GameStop’s. The size mismatch is the entire story.
