GameStop’s Meme Stock Takeover Of eBay For $56 Billion Sounds Terrible For Everyone

At the end of last week, there were rumblings that GameStop would make a bid on eBay, a company roughly four times its size. Then on Sunday night, before markets opened this week, the gaming retailer made the offer official: $56 billion to acquire the online auction and reseller platform. GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen claims it’s a match made in heaven, while everyone else is left scratching their heads as the meme stock company tries to extend its death grip around the market for rare Pokémon cards and other collectibles.

The offer to eBay’s board comes to $125 a share, a massive premium over the stock’s recent average price of around $90 a share. According to Cohen, the deal will be half cash, half stock, with up to $20 billion in financing on the table from TD Securities. GameStop had $9.4 billion in cash and “liquid investments” as of January 31, 2026, which presumably includes the company’s large purchases of Bitcoin after closing more stores. And of course, as part of the deal, Cohen will become CEO of the new joint GameStop/eBay entity, paid only based on the future performance of its stock.

That math still leaves GameStop $14 billion short of the promised sale price. Pressed on the details during an interview with CNBC on Monday morning, Cohen was tight-lipped and implied the company would simply issue more stock, diluting the investments of existing shareholders, until it could make the math work. “I don’t understand your question,” the CEO said when asked where the money is coming from. “We’re offering half cash, half stock, and we have the ability to issue stock in order to get the deal done, but the full details of the offer are on our website.” Cohen also confirmed that he did not reach out to eBay prior to announcing the bid.

The executive is essentially arguing like a private equity vulture that eBay has been underperforming its recent investments, and he has a plan to make the online seller platform meet its untapped potential. This plan includes $2 billion in cost cuts across marketing, product development, and administrative expenses. Cohen also claims that GameStop’s 1,600 stores will provide a better infrastructure for shipping logistics and authenticating seller merchandise. The result, he promises, will nearly double earnings per share and operating profit margins. “GameStop’s Board unanimously supports this proposal,” Cohen says, which isn’t surprising considering he controls it.

It’s easy to see some of the overlaps between the two companies. GameStop sells used games, retro games, and increasingly lots of TCG products like Pokémon and Magic: The Gathering cards, including rare graded collectibles. eBay acquired TCG Player back in 2022, a popular trading card marketplace where players buy and sell on their own, and is also the platform of choice for scalpers trying to profit off of shortages for anything from limited quantity video game collector’s editions to Pokémon Lego sets.

Like Blockbuster trying to buy Netflix

But eBay makes most of its money off fees from other people doing independent transactions, whereas GameStop makes its money from being a pawn shop: taking used trade-ins for cheap and selling them for dollars less than brand-new products. In fact, eBay is one of the best alternatives to GameStop when it comes to getting used video games or even collectibles. Even with the middleman commission fee, buying directly from other users is cheaper than going through a brick-and-mortar chain.

This is where the confusion starts to come in. eBay has much higher revenue and much stronger profits than GameStop, precisely because it is an online business that makes money off of being a platform where other people sell stuff rather than trying to sell its own stuff. While it’s obvious how eBay could help GameStop, it’s not obvious at all how GameStop would help eBay. From the outside at least, this has every appearance of being like Blockbuster trying to buy Netflix.

And while I am not an expert on M&A, I have been watching GameStop pretty closely over the last five years. Everyone expected Cohen to come in and leverage the company’s inflated meme stock value to make transformational shifts, adopting the direct-to-consumer model of the pet food company he founded, Chewy, and applying it to gaming and related hobbies. Instead, the last five years were filled with failed initiatives, ranging from attempts to mimic Amazon’s cheap day-one shipping to selling PC gaming gear and flat screen TVs.

The company has had more success riding the current wave of chaos around the Pokémon TCG, but nothing has been as lucrative as simply closing stores and doing annual layoffs. A couple of years ago, there were half a dozen GameStops within 5 miles of my home. Now there are only two. The GME diamond hands crowd is unsurprisingly stoked about Cohen’s latest big brain idea. Maybe it’s just the company’s most elaborate stunt yet to juice its meme stock price. If the deal does somehow end up going through, it seems like it will be bad for everyone who shops at either company, but especially anyone working for them.