All podcasts / All-In Podcast / Summary

GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen's $56B Plan to Take Over eBay

2026-06-23 - 63 min - source - Read full transcript
David Friedberg (host)Ryan Cohen

Key insights

Cohen escalated from passive GameStop investor to activist by filing a 13D once his stake crossed 5%, after GameStop's own CEO had tried to neutralize him with a single board seat.
GameStop's CEO originally courted Cohen as a friendly board member to help fend off a different activist, offering him one seat on a large board. Cohen found that unattractive, kept accumulating shares through COVID, and once he crossed 5% had to choose between a passive 13G and an activist 13D - he chose 13D, signaling he intended to engage rather than stay silent.
activist-investing
The eBay bid is structured as 50% cash / 50% stock funded off eBay's own balance sheet, not an all-cash offer, because GameStop does not have $56-60B in cash on hand.
Cohen explicitly rejects the idea of raising a fully separate cash syndicate: existing eBay shareholders would roll into the combined company and keep exposure to eBay's earnings, while getting a cash premium plus a operator he argues is more incentivized and competent than current management.
activist-investing
eBay's board rejected the offer citing financing uncertainty, but Cohen argues that objection is circular since the financing is meant to come from eBay's own balance sheet, and says the board has largely refused direct engagement.
Cohen says outreach attempts get routed to eBay's 'high-priced advisors' who then fail to schedule meetings when asked. He frames this as expected self-interested behavior from a management team and board that are 'making a lot of money' and don't want to hand over control.
activist-investing
Cohen is committing $500 million of his own capital to the transaction and frames the fight as an owner risking personal money against an entrenched, highly-paid board and management team with minimal personal skin in the game.
He repeatedly contrasts his own capital at risk (and the fact he has never sold a GameStop share) with a management team he describes as collecting large board/executive pay without buying stock themselves - including a CEO whose severance package is over $100 million.
activist-investing
Cohen's first GameStop turnaround plan - modeling it after Chewy's e-commerce playbook - was wrong, and it took him about a year to recognize why.
He imported e-commerce hires from Chewy and Amazon and tried to make GameStop 'more like Chewy,' but Chewy's repeat-purchase, fast-inventory-turn consumables model didn't transfer to GameStop's physical retail, cyclical hardware business, which instead ended up overstocked with slow-moving inventory like TVs.
company-building-philosophy
The actual GameStop turnaround came from aggressive cost cutting combined with a pivot into collectibles (trading cards, sports memorabilia), which now makes up about 42% of revenue.
Cohen credits the pivot to GameStop's existing trade-in/liquidity strengths (e.g. paying cash on the spot for graded trading cards) rather than chasing new consumer-electronics categories that didn't take off, alongside cutting SG&A from $228M to $202M and building a $9.7B cash position.
ecommerce-marketplace-strategy
Cohen's hiring philosophy is 'will over skill' - he explicitly prioritizes drive and relentlessness over resume-matched experience.
He cites hiring a Chewy customer-service leader who came from an assisted-living-facility background with no relevant resume but reapplied repeatedly, calling the team he built 'a bunch of fellow psychopaths' who go all in - and separately treats supplier hostility ('I never have to talk to you again') as a sign of a well-negotiated deal, since supplier gifts signal overpaying.
company-building-philosophy
eBay has stagnated across every core metric since COVID while its expenses have grown, which Cohen frames as the core case for new management.
He cites GMV down, active users down roughly 30 million, operating earnings down, revenue roughly flat, and operating expenses now over half of revenue for a business that carries no inventory - contrasted with sellers who, unlike on Amazon Seller Central, must rely on third-party tools because eBay doesn't provide them and has cut concierge support for top sellers.
ebay-turnaround-plan
Cohen's eBay plan has three parts: cut about $2B of costs from a $5.5B expense base, build out live commerce, and create a marketplace for digital in-game collectibles.
On cost cutting he points to $2.4B in sales/marketing spend producing no user growth. On live commerce he says eBay has the users and brand but a broken platform, an application-gated seller onboarding process, and almost no viewers, against a competitor 'completely crushing it' in a roughly $400B TAM. On digital collectibles, he wants to extend eBay's physical-collectibles authentication expertise into liquidity for in-game items like skins and weapons.
ebay-turnaround-plan
Cohen argues eBay could have become Amazon by taking first-party inventory and scaling logistics, but instead ended up owning categories mostly by default because Amazon focused elsewhere.
He credits eBay's early marketplace model and first-mover advantage for staying power, but says its execution since the Donahoe era (post-2015) has been weak, and that categories like collectibles and used auto parts are less a deliberate strategic win than a byproduct of Amazon's focus on other categories.
ecommerce-marketplace-strategy
Cohen points to eBay's PayPal, Skype, and StubHub history as evidence for staying focused on a single core marketplace brand rather than diversifying, while criticizing eBay's more recent acquisitions as inconsistent with that discipline.
He notes eBay ultimately spun out PayPal, sold most of Skype (which then benefited from Microsoft overpaying for it), and sold StubHub back to its original founder at Viagogo - framing his own strategy at Chewy and GameStop as similarly single-brand focused, and saying eBay's recent acquisitions 'don't make sense' by that same logic.
ecommerce-marketplace-strategy
Cohen views trading cards and physical collectibles as fundamentally an 'ego play' with no functional utility, but argues in-game digital items have real utility and represent a bigger, unbuilt liquidity market than NFTs ever delivered.
He contrasts owning art or a graded trading card (status only) with in-game digital items like skins and weapons, which have actual utility within games, and argues no marketplace currently provides liquidity for them - a gap he says eBay, given its collectibles authentication expertise, is positioned to fill and calls the addressable market potentially larger than eBay's physical-collectibles business.
digital-collectibles-vision

Companies

Techniques and frameworks

Summary

David Friedberg hosts a solo All-In Interview with GameStop chairman and CEO Ryan Cohen, centered on Cohen's unsolicited roughly $56 billion bid to acquire eBay and run the combined company. The conversation opens with Cohen's origin story: he built Chewy from an $8-domain-style pet e-commerce idea into a $3.35 billion sale in 2017, competing directly against Amazon on price and supply-chain efficiency in a low-margin category, and developing a "will over skill" hiring philosophy along the way - preferring relentless, motivated hires over resume-matched ones, and treating hostile supplier negotiations as a sign of a good deal rather than a bad relationship.

Cohen then walks through how he became GameStop's CEO almost by accident: starting as a passive sub-5% investor after GameStop's own management courted him as a friendly board seat to fend off a different activist, then escalating to a 13D activist filing once his stake grew, joining the board with two Chewy colleagues, and eventually taking the CEO role. His first instinct - importing Chewy's e-commerce playbook wholesale - was wrong, and it took roughly a year to recognize that a low-margin, repeat-purchase consumables business and a cyclical physical hardware retailer required opposite operating models. The actual turnaround came from aggressive cost cutting (SG&A down from $228M to $202M) and a pivot into collectibles - trading cards and sports memorabilia - now roughly 42% of GameStop's revenue, built on the same trade-in liquidity mechanics GameStop already used for games and hardware.

The core of the interview is Cohen's eBay thesis. He argues eBay's marketplace model, secondhand and collectibles strength, and authentication capability are highly complementary to GameStop's, and that eBay - unlike physical retail - sits inside his "circle of competence" as an e-commerce operator. He lays out a three-part plan: an immediate roughly $2 billion cost cut against a $5.5 billion expense base (including $2.4 billion of sales and marketing spend that isn't producing user growth), an aggressive push into live commerce (a market he sizes around $400 billion where eBay has users and stores but a broken platform and a seller application backlog), and a longer-term bet on building a liquidity marketplace for digital in-game collectibles like skins and weapons, which he argues have more real utility than NFTs ever had. He backs this with a blunt read of eBay's post-2015 decline: falling GMV, active users down roughly 30 million, flat revenue, and operating expenses now over half of revenue for a business that carries no inventory - plus a seller base he says eBay has stopped supporting relative to Amazon's Seller Central.

On deal mechanics, Cohen confirms the offer is 50% cash and 50% stock, funded off eBay's own balance sheet rather than a separately raised all-cash bid, which lets existing eBay shareholders retain upside in the combined company. He says the eBay board's rejection letter cited financing uncertainty - an objection he calls circular, since the financing depends on eBay's own balance sheet - and that the board has largely avoided direct engagement, routing him instead to outside advisors who don't schedule meetings. He frames the standoff as a contest between an owner willing to risk personal capital (he says he's putting in $500 million of his own money and has never sold a GameStop share) and an entrenched board and management team that draw large pay with little personal ownership, including a CEO whose severance package exceeds $100 million. He closes by noting a recent failed shareholder vote to lower the threshold for calling a special meeting from 20% to 10%, and says GameStop has "a lot of different escalation paths" available if the board continues to refuse engagement.

Notable Quotes

"Everyone hates GameStop, and it seems like everyone in the media basically wants us to fail and wants them to succeed." - Ryan Cohen

"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." - Ryan Cohen

"I like to do big things... life is too short to do it small." - Ryan Cohen

"I was on the toilet." - Ryan Cohen, on where the idea to bid for eBay came from

"I'm putting 500 million of my own money into this transaction. I haven't pulled a penny out of GameStop." - Ryan Cohen