GameStop’s CEO won’t quit on buying eBay, and it looks like he’s chasing the live-shopping boom
Ryan Cohen has been rejected, called “not credible,” and told no. He’s still buying eBay stock and saying “I want to own it.” Here’s where GameStop actually is now, what the live-shopping app Whatnot is, and why Cohen seems to want to build a rival to it.
GameStop isn’t supposed to be a takeover predator. It’s the meme-stock video game chain everyone wrote off years ago. But its CEO just keeps trying to buy eBay, a company worth far more than GameStop, and he won’t take no for an answer.
CEO Ryan Cohen has been rejected and is tripling down anyway. And once you understand what he’s actually chasing, the live-shopping gold rush, the whole strange plan starts to make sense.
Where GameStop actually is now
First, some context, because GameStop isn’t the company you remember.
A few years ago, GameStop was a dying mall store, kept alive mostly by the 2021 meme-stock frenzy, when small investors banded together and sent its shares to the moon. Most people figured it would eventually fade out.
It didn’t. Under Cohen, who took over as CEO, GameStop slashed costs, closed underperforming stores, and pivoted hard. This week it reported its most profitable quarter on record. The big shift: it’s no longer really a video game store. It’s increasingly a collectibles and trading-card seller, Pokémon cards, sports cards, and refurbished tech are now core to its business, and they’re booming.
That pivot is the key to everything else. GameStop found money in collectibles, and that’s the exact same pond eBay swims in.
What Cohen keeps doing
Now the takeover saga, which has become almost personal.
Cohen has been pushing to buy eBay, and eBay’s board flatly rejected him, calling the offer “neither credible nor attractive.” A normal executive would walk away. Cohen did the opposite. He’s kept buying eBay stock, GameStop now holds about a 7.8% stake, and he’s threatening to take his offer straight to eBay’s shareholders, going over the board’s head.
His pitch is blunt. “I want to own eBay,” Cohen said. “I want to own it for the long term. It’s a great business that’s been poorly managed.” He’s not hiding the ambition. He thinks he can run it better.
The real target: live shopping
Here’s the part that explains why, and it’s the genuinely interesting angle.
Cohen keeps describing the same vision: combining eBay’s online marketplace with GameStop’s physical stores to dominate collectibles. “The categories where we’re having the most success, eBay is as well,” he said. “What eBay is doing online, we’re doing offline. These are businesses that tie in very well.”
The magic word he keeps circling is authentication, verifying that a trading card or collectible is real. He talks about using GameStop’s 1,600 stores to bring “more intake and live verification,” letting people walk collectibles into a store to get checked and sold, instead of mailing them off.
That combination, live selling plus authenticated collectibles, isn’t a random idea. It’s the exact formula behind the hottest thing in online retail right now: a company called Whatnot.
So what is Whatnot?
If you haven’t heard of it, here’s the quick version, because it’s a phenomenon.
Whatnot is a live-shopping app. Picture QVC crossed with Twitch: a seller goes live on video, shows off collectibles, trading cards, sneakers, toys, and runs real-time auctions while viewers chat and bid. The big draw is “breaks,” where a host rips open packs of cards live on camera and buyers who paid in get whatever’s pulled. It turns collecting into a live, social event.
It started with Funko Pops and trading cards in 2019 and exploded. In 2025, sellers moved over $8 billion worth of goods on Whatnot, more than double the year before. The company is now valued around $11.5 billion. One Caitlin Clark rookie card pulled in a live break later resold for $660,000. Live shopping went from niche to a genuine retail revolution, and Whatnot is leading it.
Why this is what Cohen wants
Connect the dots, and Cohen’s plan snaps into focus.
Whatnot proved there’s enormous money in live, community-driven sales of authenticated collectibles. eBay saw it too and launched its own version, eBay Live. TikTok is pushing TikTok Shop. The whole industry is racing into live commerce.
Cohen is sitting on two of the puzzle pieces. GameStop has the physical stores and a booming collectibles business. eBay has the massive online marketplace, the global scale, and its own authentication operation. Bolt them together and you’d have a collectibles powerhouse: walk a card into a GameStop, get it verified, and sell it live to eBay’s huge online audience. That’s a direct shot at Whatnot’s model, with a brick-and-mortar advantage Whatnot doesn’t have.
In other words, Cohen doesn’t just want eBay because it’s cheap. He wants to weld it to GameStop and chase the live-shopping boom that’s minting billions.
Will it actually happen?
Now the honest reality check.
It’s a long shot. eBay’s board doesn’t want the deal, has called it not credible, and Cohen would have to win over shareholders or launch a hostile takeover of a company much bigger than his own. That’s a steep climb, and plenty of analysts are skeptical he can pull it off.
There’s also the Cohen factor. He’s the guy who turned a dying GameStop profitable and co-founded the pet retailer Chewy before that, so betting against him outright has burned people before. But “he’s done surprising things” isn’t the same as “this will work.”
What’s clear is the logic isn’t crazy, even if the deal is unlikely. Cohen has spotted where retail is going, live, social, authenticated collectibles, and he’s trying to buy his way to the front of it. Whether eBay’s shareholders let him is the real question. For now, GameStop’s CEO is doing what he always does: ignoring the people telling him no, and making a bet nobody else would. The empty mall store wants to own the internet’s garage sale. Stranger things have happened, and lately, most of them have involved GameStop.
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Article compiled and edited by Derek Gibbs (entertainment editor) and the Clownfish TV newsroom.
Hat Tips:
Barron’s, via SEC filings (June 2026), verified for Cohen’s “I want to own eBay” and “what eBay is doing online, we’re doing offline” quotes, the 7.8% stake, the board’s “neither credible nor attractive” rejection, the record-profitable quarter, and the live-verification/1,600-stores strategy
Crunchbase and Sacra (2025-2026), verified for Whatnot’s $8 billion-plus 2025 GMV, the $11.5 billion valuation, the live-auction/breaks model, and the competition with eBay Live and TikTok Shop
Team Whatnot and Sports Collectors Daily (2025-2026), verified for the $660,000 Caitlin Clark card, the collectibles-and-trading-card category dominance, and the live-shopping growth figures
Within and We Are Founders (2025-2026), verified for Whatnot’s QVC-meets-Twitch format, the 2019 Funko Pop origins, and the broader live-commerce industry context