Ryan Cohen is reportedly considering pulling GameStop's $56 billion bid for eBay and offering a partnership instead, which is a considerably less romantic proposition than "we're going to buy the company and I'll run it better than you do." According to Bloomberg's Liana Baker, citing people familiar with the matter, Cohen is weighing a joint venture that would let eBay tap GameStop's roughly 1,600 US retail locations, with both sides chasing higher-margin categories like trading cards and collectibles. GameStop would want board representation as part of any arrangement. No final decision has been made, and Cohen could still pursue other options.
The market's verdict on the climbdown was immediate and telling. GameStop shares rose more than 2% on the report. eBay fell 1.4%. Investors, in other words, are relieved that GameStop might stop trying to swallow something six times its size, and mildly disappointed on eBay's behalf that the premium-paying suitor may be walking away.
The Arithmetic Was Always Brutal
Strip out the ambition and the numbers explain everything. GameStop's market capitalisation sits at roughly $8.6 billion. eBay's is around $48 to $50 billion, and eBay stock has actually gained 28% across 2026 while GameStop's has fallen roughly 27 to 28% since the bid was made, from $26.53 down to about $19.24. So the acquirer got substantially cheaper while the target got substantially more expensive, which is the opposite of how a stock-funded takeover is supposed to trend. Cohen had proposed $125 per share split evenly between cash and GameStop stock, a 46% premium on eBay's unaffected price, and openly floated issuing additional shares to close the gap. Every point GameStop's stock fell made that currency less persuasive and the required dilution more absurd.
eBay's rejection in May was blunt about it, dismissing the offer as "neither credible nor attractive," and analysts largely agreed, noting a takeover of that scale would demand enormous debt and share issuance from a company with neither the balance sheet nor the operational track record to justify it. So this isn't Cohen cleverly pivoting to a smarter structure. It's arithmetic finally catching up with a bid that never had the financing story to work.
What GameStop Actually Brings to the Table
The partnership pitch is where things get genuinely interesting, and slightly poignant. GameStop's contribution to any joint venture is its physical footprint, roughly 1,600 stores where buyers and sellers could verify high-value collectibles, hand off items, or resolve disputes. That's a real asset for a marketplace like eBay, since expensive collectibles trade on trust and clean logistics, and a nationwide network of staffed locations solves problems a purely online platform struggles with.
The company's most compelling offer to a partner is essentially "we have buildings everywhere." That squares uncomfortably with Cohen's own recent framing, when he dismissed the death of physical game sales as "totally, totally irrelevant" because software is now a small fraction of the business and collectibles make up over half. He's right that GameStop has become a collectibles retailer, and this potential deal is the logical Endpoint of that transformation: GameStop as a physical service layer bolted onto somebody else's marketplace.
Cohen Gets What He Actually Wanted Anyway
GameStop already holds a 9.8% stake in eBay, making it one of the company's largest shareholders, having built that position up from an initial 5%. Cohen vowed after the May rejection that he'd get a deal "one way or another," and a partnership with board seats attached would deliver a substantial chunk of what a takeover was meant to achieve, namely influence over eBay's strategy and category direction, without needing $56 billion he plainly doesn't have.
That reframes the whole exercise. Whether by design or by necessity, Cohen may end up inside eBay's boardroom shaping decisions, which for an activist investor is often the real objective anyway. The takeover bid, the public campaign, the interviews about running eBay better, all of it built pressure and a stake that now gives him leverage he wouldn't otherwise have had. He forfeited a potential $35 billion payout and told his company to focus entirely on this pursuit, which is a hell of a bet, and the consolation prize of board influence over a company GameStop can't afford to buy is a considerably softer landing than walking away with nothing.
More:Ubisoft Says Don't Buy Future Soldier. Claim It Free Instead.
Read
Source Editing
Visual Editing
Related news
