Ryan Cohen LIVE: GameStop's $56B bid for eBay is half cash, half stock — and he wants to run it like a startup

GameStop's $56B eBay Bid: Ryan Cohen Wants to Run It Like a Startup

Ryan Cohen, CEO of GameStop and co-founder of Chewy, has made an unsolicited $56 billion bid for eBay at $125 per share — structured as half cash, half stock. The cash component is ~$28 billion, backed by a highly confident letter from GameStop's bank plus $9 billion in existing cash on hand. The remaining consideration asks eBay shareholders to roll their equity into the combined company.

Cohen's pitch to those shareholders is straightforward: take 40% above where GameStop started buying the stock, and bet on him to run the combined business. He says he would roll 100% of his own equity rather than take cash, and his existing GameStop compensation is tied to doubling market cap in the first tranche and 10x-ing it for full vesting — with no salary and no bonuses taken to date.

“We made an offer yesterday — $125 a share. With me running eBay, I think the earnings power of the company is going to increase substantially. eBay is spending $5.5B on operating expenses on an $11B business that has no inventory and is asset light — 11,500 employees. It doesn't make sense. I could run that business from my house.”

The operational thesis

Cohen's core argument is that eBay is dramatically overstaffed for what it actually is. The platform runs on $5.5 billion in operating expenses against an $11 billion revenue base, with 11,500 employees, despite being asset-light and carrying no inventory. He says he could cut $2 billion from sales, marketing, and corporate overhead — and points to GameStop as proof of concept, where he pulled SG&A down 47%, or $800 million, largely by cutting marketing spend that he argues wasn't generating returns.

The leverage angle concerns him. Cohen says he intends to pay down debt fast rather than run the business hard with leverage on it, treating cost efficiency as the mechanism to increase earnings while reducing the debt load.

The collectibles play

The strategic logic centers on collectibles. eBay already has 130 million users and dominance in trading cards and collectibles, but Cohen argues trust and authentication are the bottlenecks. GameStop's 1,600 stores become live authentication points — sellers ship items to a store, get them verified, and buyers get confidence the item is real. He sees this as a zero-capex way to increase intake and deepen a category eBay already owns.

Live commerce is the other priority. Cohen says eBay is getting beaten by competitors in live commerce despite its user base, and the fix is better tech and creator partnerships rather than new distribution.

Why eBay has survived everything

Cohen frames eBay's durability as the core investment case. The site looks the same as it did in 1995, generates over $2 billion a year in profit, and has outlasted dozens of well-funded vertical competitors that raised $100 million-plus to attack specific categories. In his view, that resilience is precisely what makes it attractive to run — not disrupt.

He also argues the antitrust path is clear for GameStop in a way it wouldn't be for any large e-commerce strategic, which he believes effectively rules out Amazon and similar players as competing bidders.

Owner mentality vs. professional management

Cohen's sharpest critique of eBay's current setup isn't the management team specifically — he says they've done a "decent job" — but the incentive structure. Board directors are collecting $350,000–$450,000 each with no insider buying. Equity is distributed widely and treated as compensation rather than ownership. His argument is that without everything on the line, you don't work 20-hour days, seven days a week, and you don't move with urgency. He recounts that when GameStop approached eBay about an authentication partnership roughly one to two years ago, eBay never engaged seriously — everyone was on vacation, follow-ups went unanswered.

If the acquisition doesn't close, Cohen says he'll pursue whatever is necessary to protect GameStop's investment, including a board seat. But he's clear that a partial partnership — GameStop stores doing authentication for eBay for a fee — is a real fallback, not just a negotiating chip.

The ball, as Cohen puts it, is in eBay's court.