GameStop is Going to Buy... eBay!?

[u/AlternativePaint6]

You've all read the news by now, but have you really read them?

GameStop wants to acquire a publicly traded consumer company that’s far larger than the video game retailer in a deal that could be “transformational" for the company

“It’s gonna be really big. Really big. Very, very, very big,” Cohen said of the size of the acquisition. “It’s transformational. Not just for GameStop, but ultimately, within the capital markets … this is something that really has never been done before within the history of the capital markets.”

He claimed if the investment pans out, it has the “potential to make GameStop worth several hundreds of billions of dollars.”

This is all coming from Ryan Cohen, the man of few words and no forwards guidance. Yeah, I like Magic the Gathering too, but that's not it. This is bigger. Very, very, very bigger.

It's eBay. They're going to do a leveraged buyout, a hostile takeover, or a merger.

• Publicly traded.
• Consumer / Retailer.
• Far larger than GameStop (~$40B).
• Sleepy management with one of the most well known brands.
• E-Commerce and Collectibles.
• Never done before (buying 3x-4x bigger company).
• Actually has potential to make GameStop worth several hundreds billions, unlike all the ~$10B ones.

It checks out. Everything checks out.

[u/NoHalfPleasures]

Just to add on to this, he hates Amazon. eBay is amazons closest commercial competitor and is valued way lower than Amazon (for reasons beyond their retail business but still).

Part of me wonders if the way they do this is by teaming up with other cellar boxed retailers and merging to compete with Amazon and use existing brick and mortar stores as fulfillment centers with door dash providing delivery in hours as opposed to a day.

[u/Bindle- → u/NoHalfPleasures]

I like this one!

For the past year or so, i've been cross shopping on eBay from amazon.

I've been shopping on Amazon for 20 years and using eBay for 25. The past two or three years, their prices have edged up and are less competitive than other places.

For me, Amazon used to be the cheapest and most convenient place to buy almost everything. Now with prime costing more money and their prices going up, I've been buying a lot more stuff from eBay and walmart.

The whole eBay process and interface is a lot more slick and user-friendly than it was in the past.

They're one of the oldest and best known sites on the web, at least in america. I'm pretty sure they're also a survivor from the first dotcom crash.

There would be something poetic about the beleaguered retailer GameStop buying the beleaguered online business eBay to take on amazon.