GameStop Makes $55.5 Billion Offer to Buy eBay

GameStop has announced it has made a $55.5 cardinal connection to bargain eBay astatine $125.00 per stock successful currency and stock.

CEO Ryan Cohen, who would go CEO of the combined institution should the woody spell through, told The Wall Street Journal helium wants to marque eBay a “legit rival to Amazon,” arsenic helium bids to turn his concern beyond games and merchandise and deed a $35 cardinal payout successful the process.

GameStop said the currency portion of the connection is expected to beryllium funded from a operation of currency and liquid investments connected GameStop’s equilibrium sheet, which totaled $9.4 cardinal arsenic of January 31, 2026, and “third-party acquisition financing,” with up to $20 cardinal successful indebtedness financing from TD Securities. GameStop did not accidental precisely wherever this third-party acquisition financing would travel from.

In its announcement, GameStop said eBay isn’t making capable wealth for what it’s spending, and that it would present $2 cardinal of annualized outgo reductions wrong 12 months of closing the deal, suggesting plans for important cuts. GameStop added that its 1,600 U.S. retail locations “give eBay a nationalist web for authentication, intake, fulfillment, and unrecorded commerce,” confirming plans to bring the eBay concern into its stores.

GameStop posted a missive sent from Cohen to eBay president Paul Pressler successful which the GameStop CEO said helium would person “no salary, nary currency bonuses, and nary aureate parachute — I volition beryllium compensated solely based connected the show of the combined company.”

In an interrogation with The Wall Street Journal, Cohen said that if eBay turns the connection down, helium volition spell straight to shareholders. “There is cipher who is much qualified, based connected my experience, to tally the eBay business,” Cohen insisted. As for wherever he’ll get the wealth needed for the deal, The Wall Street Journal said Cohen whitethorn crook to Middle Eastern sovereign-wealth funds.

It’s casual to spot Cohen’s program to fuse eBay and GameStop here, fixed GameStop’s existent absorption connected nostalgia via higher-margin items specified arsenic trading cards and retro games and consoles, implicit selling caller video games. He told The Wall Street Journal helium would marque GameStop stores locations to cod and authenticate items from eBay sellers. "GameStop unit already inspect and people hardware and trading cards each day," GameStop said. "Sellers locomotion in, items are verified connected the spot, and listings transportation a spot badge." Cohen besides said eBay should beryllium doing much livestreams to merchantability items. “It could beryllium a legit rival to Amazon,” Cohen said.

As The Wall Street Journal has reported, Cohen could marque up to $35 cardinal successful banal if the company’s marketplace worth hits $100 billion, among different compensation bundle criteria. In January, the 40-year-old billionaire told the work helium wanted a “big” woody that is “ultimately either going to beryllium genius oregon totally, wholly foolish.”

As of January, Cohen had a involvement of implicit 9% successful GameStop and was its biggest idiosyncratic shareholder. Investor Michael Burry, who owns shares successful the company, said earlier this twelvemonth that Cohen “has a crappy business, and helium is milking it champion helium tin portion taking vantage of the meme banal improvement to rise currency and hold for an accidental to marque a large bargain of a existent increasing currency cattle business.”

At the opening of 2025, GameStop had astir 2,325 locations successful the U.S., but by the extremity of the twelvemonth it had closed 590 of them. It past kicked disconnected 2026 by closing adjacent much stores arsenic portion of an effort to trim costs.

For years present immoderate person called GameStop a dying bricks and mortar retailer arsenic it looks to caller and often bizarre ways to make revenue. August 2023 saw the institution propulsion retired of crypto, and it unopen its short-lived NFT marketplace conscionable a fewer months later. More precocious (and overmuch to the dismay of its employees), GameStop held its first-ever Trade Anything Day, which saw customers bringing successful virtually thing for trade-in recognition astatine their section stores.

During the 2025 fiscal twelvemonth ending January 31, 2026, GameStop saw nett income of $3.630 billion, down from $3.823 cardinal successful 2024. Operating income was $232.1 million, compared to an operating nonaccomplishment of $26.2 cardinal successful fiscal twelvemonth 2024.

Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images.

Wesley is Director, News astatine IGN. Find him connected Twitter astatine @wyp100. You tin scope Wesley astatine [email protected] oregon confidentially astatine [email protected].