Osmond Chia,Business reporterand Daniel Thomas,Business reporter
Reuters/Nick Zieminski
Video game retailer GameStop has made a surprise $55.5bn (£40.9bn) offer to buy e-commerce giant eBay.
GameStop's chief executive, Ryan Cohen, said eBay could be much more successful under his leadership and even rival Amazon.
He also said he was prepared to take his bid directly to shareholders if eBay's board rejected it. eBay said it will consider the proposal but analysts expressed doubts about the idea.
Morgan Stanley said the two companies had "fundamentally different" business models, while Bernstein pointed to GameStop's smaller balance sheet, saying it would be "surprised if anything became of it".
GameStop rose to prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic when it became the centre of the so-called meme stock craze.
The chain still has around 1,600 outlets in the US and has seen something of a turnaround under Cohen.
Its net profit rose to $418.4m in 2025 - up from $131.3m the previous year - although sales fell.
eBay, which is worth about four times more than GameStop, was launched in 1995 as a marketplace for hobbyists and became one of tech's best-known brands.
But its user base has shrunk amid competition from the likes of Amazon. It currently has 136 million users worldwide, down from 175 million in 2018.
"eBay should be worth - and will be worth - a lot more money," Cohen told the Wall Street Journal. "It could be a legit competitor to Amazon," he added.
Under the proposed deal to buy eBay, Cohen would become the chief executive of the new firm and receive no salary or bonuses, being "compensated solely based on the performance of the combined company".
GameStop, which currently has a stock market valuation of around $11.9bn, said it has a commitment letter from TD Securities to provide around $20bn in debt to help finance the takeover.
Cohen said he planned to cut costs at eBay by $2bn within a year of a deal being completed.
This would mainly fall across eBay's sales and marketing division, which GameStop said had failed to attract more users to a "marketplace with near-universal brand recognition".
The proposal does not sound like a "terribly good offer" as it would saddle eBay with GameStop's debt, said Sucharita Kodali, a retail analyst at research firm Forrester.
It makes sense for GameStop because it could lift its valuation by being linked with a larger company like eBay, she told the BBC.
"The truth is, we are not necessarily putting two strong companies together," Kodali added.
Shares in eBay rose by 5.5% on Monday morning in New York, while GameStop fell by more than 4%.
GameStop's shops would give eBay a national network for its "live commerce" and other business operations, Cohen said.
Cohen, who became the GameStop boss in 2023, has criticised its slow shift into e-commerce.
