GameStop presses ahead with $56 billion takeover bid for eBay

GameStop said Friday it will keep pursuing its roughly $56 billion bid for eBay, despite the marketplace company rejecting the unsolicited cash-and-stock offer and calling it “neither credible nor attractive.” The move keeps Ryan Cohen’s takeover campaign alive and turns GameStop’s reinvention into a public test of whether investors will believe a former video-game retailer can take on one of the internet’s biggest commerce platforms.

GameStop first disclosed the proposal on May 3, 2026, at $125.00 per share in cash and stock, valuing eBay at about $55.5 billion. The company said it had already built a 5% economic stake in eBay through derivatives and beneficial ownership of common stock, and said the price represented a 46% premium to eBay’s unaffected closing price on February 4, 2026, the day GameStop began accumulating its position. eBay’s board rejected the bid on May 12 after reviewing it with financial and legal advisers.

The scale gap between the two companies remains stark. eBay’s investor relations page listed a market capitalization of about $47.89 billion on June 26, 2026, below GameStop’s headline valuation for the proposed deal even before financing questions are considered. That mismatch has helped fuel skepticism from investors and analysts about how GameStop would pay for the acquisition, what leverage it would need, and how a company rooted in physical video-game stores would integrate a large online marketplace.

Cohen has been the public face of the push since surprising Wall Street with the offer in May. GameStop disclosed on June 23 that Cohen withdrew his CEO performance award, while the company’s 2026 annual meeting was scheduled for July 7. The latest filing also showed a sharper financial backdrop: GameStop said it expected adjusted EBITDA of more than $600 million in fiscal 2026, up from $345.4 million in fiscal 2025. GameStop shares rose more than 2% in after-hours trading after the update.

For GameStop, the bid is more than a one-off takeover attempt. It is a credibility test for a company still trying to move beyond its meme-stock reputation and define a durable strategy in digital commerce. Keeping the eBay bid alive suggests management is willing to lean into scale, publicity and investor attention, even as the business case for a combination of Grapevine, Texas-based GameStop and San Jose, California-based eBay remains unresolved.