GameStop has announced it has made a $55.5 billion offer to buy eBay at $125.00 per share in cash and stock.
CEO Ryan Cohen, who would become CEO of the combined company should the deal go through, told The Wall Street Journal he wants to make eBay a “legit competitor to Amazon,” as he bids to grow his business beyond games and merchandise and hit a $35 billion payout in the process.
GameStop said the cash part of the offer is expected to be funded from a combination of cash and liquid investments on GameStop’s balance sheet, which totaled $9.4 billion as of January 31, 2026, and “third-party acquisition financing,” with up to $20 billion in debt financing from TD Securities. GameStop did not say exactly where this third-party acquisition financing would come from.
In its announcement, GameStop said eBay isn’t making enough money for what it’s spending, and that it would deliver $2 billion of annualized cost reductions within 12 months of closing the deal, suggesting plans for significant cuts. GameStop added that its 1,600 U.S. retail locations “give eBay a national network for authentication, intake, fulfillment, and live commerce,” confirming plans to bring the eBay business into its stores.
GameStop posted a letter sent from Cohen to eBay president Paul Pressler in which the GameStop CEO said he would receive “no salary, no cash bonuses, and no golden parachute — I will be compensated solely based on the performance of the combined company.”
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Cohen said that if eBay turns the offer down, he will go directly to shareholders. “There is nobody who is more qualified, based on my experience, to run the eBay business,” Cohen insisted. As for where he’ll get the money needed for the deal, The Wall Street Journal said Cohen may turn to Middle Eastern sovereign-wealth funds.
It’s easy to see Cohen’s plan to fuse eBay and GameStop here, given GameStop’s current focus on nostalgia via higher-margin items such as trading cards and retro games and consoles, over selling new video games. He told The Wall Street Journal he would make GameStop stores locations to collect and authenticate items from eBay sellers. “GameStop staff already inspect and grade hardware and trading cards every day,” GameStop said. “Sellers walk in, items are verified on the spot, and listings carry a trust badge.” Cohen also said eBay should be doing more livestreams to sell items. “It could be a legit competitor to Amazon,” Cohen said.
As The Wall Street Journal has reported, Cohen could make up to $35 billion in stock if the company’s market value hits $100 billion, among other compensation package criteria. In January, the 40-year-old billionaire told the publication he wanted a “big” deal that is “ultimately either going to be genius or totally, totally foolish.”
As of January, Cohen had a stake of over 9% in GameStop and was its biggest individual shareholder. Investor Michael Burry, who owns shares in the company, said earlier this year that Cohen “has a crappy business, and he is milking it best he can while taking advantage of the meme stock phenomenon to raise cash and wait for an opportunity to make a big buy of a real growing cash cow business.”
At the beginning of 2025, GameStop had around 2,325 locations in the U.S., but by the end of the year it had closed 590 of them. It then kicked off 2026 by closing even more stores as part of an effort to reduce costs.
For years now some have called GameStop a dying bricks and mortar retailer as it looks to new and often bizarre ways to generate revenue. August 2023 saw the company pull out of crypto, and it shut its short-lived NFT marketplace just a few months later. More recently (and much to the dismay of its employees), GameStop held its first-ever Trade Anything Day, which saw customers bringing in literally anything for trade-in credit at their local stores.
During the 2025 financial year ending January 31, 2026, GameStop saw net sales of $3.630 billion, down from $3.823 billion in 2024. Operating income was $232.1 million, compared to an operating loss of $26.2 million in fiscal year 2024.
Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
