Gamestop Makes Surprise US$55.5bn eBay Takeover Bid

GameStop announced on 3 May it has made a nonbinding offer to acquire eBay for US$125 per share in a cash-and-stock deal, valuing the company at US$55.5bn.

GameStop's CEO, Ryan Cohen, said eBay could be much more successful under his leadership and could potentially rival other large retailers such as Amazon. However, he added in an interview with CNBC on 4 May that he is yet to speak directly to eBay’s executives about the offer.

“We are just starting. For obvious reasons, eBay is a public company, there’s all kinds of perverse financial incentives from the board to the management team. So there’s only one way to approach something like this,” Ryan said.

He also added that he was prepared to take his bid directly to shareholders if eBay's board rejected the offer.

eBay confirmed on 4 May that it had received the offer in a statement, and said its board would review it.

A period of financial transformation

Discussing the potential takeover, analysts from Morgan Stanley say that the two companies have “fundamentally different” business models, whereas financial services firm Bernstein highlight GameStop’s smaller balance sheet, saying it would be “surprised if anything became of it”.

The GameStop brand grew in popularity amid the COVID-19 pandemic when it became the centrepoint of a strategy by investors to financially disrupt the market.    

This move saw retail investors buy up shares in unprofitable companies that professional investors had bet against, causing their share price to rise and fall sharply.

Despite this putting the company in an unwanted spotlight, the brand has undergone a period of financial turnaround under Ryan’s leadership.

The company’s net profit rose to US$418.4m in 2025 – up from US$131.3m the previous year – and the brand still operates around 1,600 stores in the US nationwide.

eBay’s value is four times that of GameStop’s, however the company’s user base has shrunk amid competition from global e-commerce giants like Amazon. 

Its current user base is at 136 million worldwide, down from 175 million in 2018.

“eBay should be worth - and will be worth - a lot more money,” Ryan told the Wall Street Journal on 4 May. “It could be a legit competitor to Amazon,” he added.

In Ryan’s letter to eBay about the proposal, he says he would become the chief executive of the new firm and “receive no salary or bonuses, no cash bonuses and no golden parachute” and that he would be “compensated solely based on the performance of the combined company”.

Universal brand recognition

GameStop currently has a stock market valuation of around US$11.9bn and said it has a commitment letter from TD Securities to provide around US$20bn in debt to help finance the takeover.

Ryan says he plans to cut costs at eBay by US$2bn within a year of the deal’s completion.

These cuts would largely affect eBay’s sales and marketing division which GameStop said in a statement had failed to attract more users to a “marketplace with near-universal brand recognition”.

Following discussions of the takeover, eBay shares rose by 5% on 4 May while GameStop’s fell by more than 9%.

Forrester analyst Sucharita Kodali criticised the offer by GameStop, saying it doesn’t sound like a “terribly good offer” and that the problem with the proposal is down to weak financial performances from both companies.

She added: “The truth is, we are not necessarily putting two strong companies together.”