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The American video game retailer GameStop has surprised the market with an unsolicited takeover bid for eBay, the auction site four times its size. Ryan Cohen, CEO of GameStop, sees potential for significant cost savings.
Cutting costs
GameStop is offering $55.5 billion (€47.4 billion) for e-commerce company eBay. CEO Cohen plans to present the offer directly to shareholders if eBay’s board of directors rejects it. “I plan to turn eBay into something worth hundreds of billions of dollars,” he told the American newspaper The Wall Street Journal. According to him, eBay must become a true competitor to Amazon. GameStop already holds a stake of about 5% in eBay and says it has the resources to finance the acquisition, even though eBay is much larger.
According to the video game retailer, the auction site is underperforming: “eBay spent $2.4 billion on Sales & Marketing in fiscal 2025 while only adding one million net active buyers (134M to 135M – a net increase of less than 0.75%). GameStop will deliver $2 billion of annualized cost reductions within twelve months of closing,” the press release states.
Controversial
Cohen aims to save $1.2 billion on sales and marketing: “More spend is not producing more users on a marketplace with near-universal brand recognition.” $300 million can be saved on product development and $500 million on general and administrative expenses. GameStop’s approximately 1,600 store locations in the U.S. could provide eBay with a national network for fulfillment and live commerce.
Analysts doubt whether an acquisition would be a good move for eBay: the e-commerce company would be saddled with a heavy debt burden following the transaction. GameStop is also a controversial company: the chain ran into serious trouble during the Covid pandemic and subsequently became a “meme stock” subject to speculation, with small investors driving the stock price up in response to large investors betting on a decline in the share price.
