GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen’s $56B Plan to Take Over eBay | 24 Jun 2026

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GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen’s $56B Plan to Take Over eBay | 24 Jun 2026 | All-In Podcast · Nuggets

The Pivot: Cohen originally intended to build an online jewelry website. [00:02:11] He bought hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of inventory and built the website and distribution network. [00:02:19] While shopping in a neighborhood pet store for his poodle, it hit him that he understood the pet product much better. [00:02:36] It was a recurring revenue purchase, and the market was fragmented because neighborhood pet stores had not yet been disrupted by Petco and PetSmart. [00:02:44]
Competing Against Amazon: Amazon had pet products since the 1990s but lacked scale in the category. [00:02:58] Cohen’s vision was to replicate the neighborhood pet store experience online at scale. [00:03:14] He adapted Amazon's supply chain best practices—fast shipping, great selection, competitive pricing—but matched it with personalized neighborhood service. [00:03:22] This included handwritten holiday cards, pet portraits, and 24/7 customer service to cultivate word-of-mouth referrals. [00:06:54]
Hyper-efficiency and Supply Chain: Running a low-margin business selling 30 lb bags of dog food against Amazon was a "game of pennies." [00:03:45], [00:05:04] Success meant negotiating fiercely with suppliers to shift from buying pallets to full truckloads, moving from distribution to direct sourcing to slash product costs. [00:04:38] It required optimized warehouse management, labor optimization, and competitive carrier rates. [00:05:04] "Pennies in the red is failure and pennies in the black is success." [00:05:23]
Management & Corporate Culture: Cohen was hyper-hands-on, managing Google AdWords campaigns until 4:00 or 5:00 AM [00:08:06] and handling supplier negotiations directly. [00:08:16] He treated these vendor dynamics as purely transactional: "If our suppliers are sending us gifts in the mail, that's a really bad sign. It means we're overpaying. If our suppliers are telling us they never want to speak to us again, it means we're getting the right price." [00:08:48]
Hiring Philosophy: Cohen looks for "will overkill." [00:09:43] He shared an anecdote of a woman running customer service who previously worked in an old people's home; despite lacking on-paper qualifications, her relentless re-applications demonstrated the exact driven, "diehard" motivation he sought. [00:09:56] He assembled a team willing to be as "psychotic" as him, asserting that "psychopaths attract psychopaths" and "A's only put up with A's." [00:10:37]
The Exit: Chewy leveraged a negative working capital cycle, enabling it to scale to billions in revenue without consuming heavy capital. [00:04:00] Cohen built and sold the business in 2017 for $3.35 billion. [00:07:28] It went public two years later at a ~$20 billion market cap. [00:11:00]

The Move to Activism: Post-Chewy, Cohen transitioned to a concentrated activist investor model, targeting established businesses with historical money-making track records that had fallen completely out of favor. [00:12:00]
The GameStop Intake: GameStop began as a passive holding under 5%. [00:13:16] In 2020, the incumbent CEO reached out to offer Cohen a single board seat, hoping he would serve as an ally against another activist. [00:13:26] Cohen passed initially, but during the COVID-19 pandemic, as GameStop was deemed a non-essential store and pushed to the verge of bankruptcy, the stock plunged. [00:13:58] Cohen accumulated more shares, passed the 5% threshold, and deliberately filed a Schedule 13D instead of a passive 13G to engage directly with management. [00:14:24]
The Initial Strategic Misstep: The original passive thesis focused on an upcoming cyclical console lifecycle (PlayStation and Xbox) where tight hardware/software supply typically drives traffic to GameStop. [00:17:38] Early in 2021, Cohen joined the board alongside two former Chewy colleagues. [00:19:00] After a massive short squeeze forced hedge funds to cover, GameStop raised $1.7 billion in equity and wiped out all its debt. [00:19:14] Cohen admitted to a major mistake during his first year: an operational bias from Chewy led him to hire e-commerce teams from Chewy and Amazon to try to shift GameStop entirely online. [00:19:40]
The Turnaround Execution: Upon stepping in as CEO, Cohen shifted strategies after observing that the e-commerce infrastructure pivot was burning cash and inventory. [00:20:18] Unlike Chewy, where inventory turned quickly, GameStop got stuck with consumer electronics like TVs, leading to heavy markdowns. [00:21:40] Cohen entered "maniacal cost-cutting mode," optimizing physical retail and prioritizing GameStop's traditional high-margin strength: pre-owned trade-ins. [00:20:45]
The Shift to Collectibles: GameStop expanded organically into collectibles, Trading Card Games (TCG), and sports cards. [00:20:54], [00:22:58] They scaled a specialized trade-in engine where customers bring in graded PSA cards (graded 8 and above) for instant cash in-store; items are then sold directly through retail shelves or sent back to central hubs to sell online. [00:23:15]
Current Financial Performance Figures:
- Q1 Revenue stands at $835 million, achieving 14% year-over-year growth. [00:26:46]
- Collectibles now make up 42% of revenue, generating $350 million. [00:26:39]
- SG&A expenses were trimmed from $228 million down to $202 million. [00:26:57]
- The balance sheet holds $9.7 billion in cash, $333 million in free cash flow, and a board-authorized share repurchase program. [00:27:02]

The Thesis: Cohen is pursuing eBay because it is highly complementary to GameStop's secondary, secondhand trade-in, and collectible authentication models. [00:28:02] While GameStop operates liquidity engines via physical brick-and-mortar storefronts, eBay does it globally online. [00:28:28] Cohen notes a pure global e-commerce marketplace sits directly within his "circle of competence," making it a much more attractive fundamental asset than capital-intensive retail. [00:28:59], [00:30:16]
The Moat and Stagnation: eBay had a powerful first-mover advantage and structural moat built on its pure marketplace network effect. [00:31:57] However, while it was well-run under founder operations, subsequent professional management allowed the business to stagnate. [00:33:22] It bled massive market share to targeted category specialists, live shopping platforms, Shopify, social commerce, and Amazon. [00:33:37] Since COVID-19, gross merchandise volume (GMV) and active users (down by 30 million) have declined, while operating expenses have bloated to over half of total revenues despite eBay holding zero inventory. [00:40:29]
Seller Alienation: Marketplace sellers are treated poorly, forced to pay for and utilize disparate third-party external tools because eBay fails to provide fundamental back-end seller capabilities natively like Amazon's Seller Central. [00:41:15] Management cut concierge programs for top power sellers, taking them for granted. [00:41:47] Cohen intends to put his engineering teams on the phone directly with power sellers to code fixes for their immediate functional pain points rather than hiring outside consulting firms. [00:42:10]
The Three-Pronged Operational Playbook for eBay:
1. Immediate Cost Extraction: Cohen intends to immediately pull $2 billion of costs out of eBay's current operating expense footprint of nearly $5.5 billion. [00:44:37] A prime target is the $2.4 billion annual sales and marketing spend that is currently resulting in net zero user growth. [00:45:01]
2. Live Commerce Scaling: Live commerce represents a rapidly expanding $400 billion TAM modeled after Asian markets. [00:46:12] eBay Live currently fails due to broken user interfaces, back-end infrastructure glitches, and an obstructive application/approval process that stalls creators from onboarding. [00:45:42] Cohen will open up GameStop's 1,600 storefront nodes to be used as production studios, photography fulfillment hubs, logistics centers, and localized physical authentication points for digital creators. [00:46:46]

Rejection Rationale: The eBay board formally rejected the $56 billion cash-and-stock proposal, citing financing uncertainty. [00:49:32], [00:50:43] Cohen labeled this an insincere defensive tactic, clarifying the debt financing is leveraged against eBay's own balance sheet—meaning if he cannot finance it, it implies eBay itself is structurally unfinancable. [00:50:43]
Entrenched Management & Governance Issues: Cohen criticized the board and executive team for maintaining an entrenched corporate setup with zero skin in the game. [00:55:48] Board members collect hundreds of thousands of dollars annually to attend a handful of meetings without spending a single dollar of their own capital to buy open-market shares. [00:57:13] The incumbent CEO has never bought a single open-market share, has sold tens of millions of dollars in equity, and possesses an exit change-of-control golden parachute valuation exceeding $100 million. [00:57:35], [00:58:14]
Personal Capital Commitment: To validate his alignment with shareholders, Cohen announced he is personally putting $500 million of his own money directly into the transaction, has never taken a single penny out of GameStop, and continues to pour heavy personal capital into his corporate assets. [00:56:40]
The Special Shareholder Meeting: Cohen confirmed that an investor proxy vote narrowly failed to lower the threshold required for shareholders to call a special meeting from 20% down to 10%. [00:53:56] It remains at 20%. [00:54:08]
Escalation Stance: Because the eBay board refuses direct meetings and routes dialogue through corporate advisory firms [00:51:04], Cohen confirmed he is partnered with tier-one investment bankers and advisors to navigate alternative escalation routes. [01:02:32] He stated he is prepared to use whatever tools are necessary to maximize value, refusing to back away from a hostile tender offer or driving open-market share accumulation to shift the overall voting block in his favor. [01:00:07], [01:01:48]

GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen’s $56B Plan to Take Over eBay | 24 Jun 2026 | All-In Podcast

References

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GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen’s $56B Plan to Take Over eBay | 24 Jun 2026 | All-In Podcast

References

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BofA: From sports to pop culture: Prediction markets $1 trillion bet | 14 Jul 2026

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Risk, Resilience, and Relationships Ft. Alona Gornick (MD & Senior Investment Strategist, Churchill Asset Management) |16 Jul 2026 | S&P Global Market Intelligence

Topic 1: The Origin and Execution Blueprint of Chewy

Topic 2: The Activist Turn and Re-engineering GameStop

Topic 3: The Strategic $56 Billion Acquisition Plan for eBay

Topic 4: Hostile Maneuvers and the Stance of the eBay Board

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