GameStop was trying to do a Private Equity style takeover. Everyone hates it when PE companies do that, but GameStop is an lol memestock so that fact was overlooked with all of the to the moon comments. I do not want any platform I use being taken over by in a highly leveraged takeover, especially not by GameStop.
You can't say "I've had a few disputes that were handled fairly, so when other people say there's weren't, that's not the standard eBay experience".
If anyone is interested in learning more here's a great primary source interview with an ebay seller: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1ij2nQymtA
and a retrospective here for those without as time/interest
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyS9Q-LnhPE
I think it's good to let folks reach their own conclusions!
Your post has strong feelings and is light on facts...
Don't they do TV commercials, engage with creators on ebay live, and have normal Adsense type ads?
Even for bootleg stuff (mostly long out of print arcade hardware), eBay is pretty much on par with AliExpress.
I had some old stuff around that Mr everyday might find (eg pristine original Gameboy Pokémon cartridge without box), and quick resale would give me 10 euro, involved resale would ask me hours and hours of work ebay allowed me to sale for 120+euro spending 1h on the description and picture (to show the scratch etc).
Another case is "oh you have the msi ge77vx4 laotop and you look for the plastic keyboard map in azerty? You can pay a 500e rma if they even allow it or buy the piece for 20e on ebay and fix it yourself"
Ymmv but it has a specific place that no one really have right now
(b) dodging Amazon co-mingling of inventory. Do I trust Amazon doing whatever it wants in a warehouse, or some eBay seller with a few years of built-up-reputation to lose but who specializes in the part I want? Let me tell you I have gotten a lot more handwritten thank-you-for-your-purchase notes from eBay sellers than Amazon. 3D printer parts, used computers+parts for the homelab, laser printer replacement parts, etc.
(Yes Amazon said they would stop recently... Not sure I believe it's fixed yet)
I buy most of my physical games from eBay too
So, collectables...
There is absolutely nothing wrong with it. I still have my ZX Spectrum 48k, Atari ST and the Archimedes my parent acquired when the school was dumping them for PCs.
It's a collection.
I think the former is more useful, and the latter could be anything.
The GGP was probably thinking the former, the GP being pedantic used the latter.
I was aiming for sassy.
I buy a mix of things: clothes, watches, and usually tiles from my favorite pottery in Michigan: Pewabic.
I am quite confident that if GameStop bought eBay, they would ruin it in the same way that K-Mart buying Sears ruined that company.
I could be wrong, I'm not a business person, but it seems kind of obvious that a company like GameStop, whose current existence appears to be due to a weird short squeeze anomaly, is not a sustainable business.
Like yeah, GameStop clearly fits into the death of retail, and acquiring eBay does increase their market visibility or presence. Beyond that, what ebay/GS could’ve gained is way different and arguably more substantial than what acquiring Sears did for either company involved. Atleast here, one operates storefronts for second hand transactions and the other expressly doesn’t. There is definitely money in that.
The physical Gamestop locations are also horrifically overprovisioned to be an eBay storefront. Many companies have already experimented with things like "lockers" which seem to be successful enough to hang around, probably because the costs are low enough they don't need to do much to justify themselves and they don't need dedicated store fronts. If they want better assurance that the things being shipped are what the sellers claim they are a partnership with UPS or Fedex and their wide variety of existing storefronts that are already provisioned with everything you need to ship almost anything makes orders of magnitude more sense, and nobody has to "acquire" the other to make that work, without the square footage of a Gamestop location.
But if eBay thought that would bring in more sales, I doubt it would be hard to find empty retail outlets in every city/town in the US and Europe since high street retail has been on a death spiral for years.
You can already use lockers for delivery/drop off with eBay through their courier company partners, at least in the UK.
If I'm looking for X, I'd much rather go to an online store, where I have access to several listings of X at varying prices and condition, vs. make a trip to a physical store, see if they have X, and hope that the condition and price matches my expectations.
Maybe if I'm not looking for X, and just want to browse a bunch of stuff (e.g. yardsale/flea market style), then a physical store could make sense.
But, to me, having this middle-man physical presence was already a problem, and eBay solved this.
I just don't feel like eBay needs GameStop.
Now, whether GameStop needs eBay is a different story. But GameStop is in trouble for two reasons:
1. Video games -- and therefore video game sales -- are moving to digital.
2. Physical stores are becoming a thing of the past for retail transactions.
eBay doesn't need GameStop's troubles.
I don't know. I don't think this acquisition would be a good idea.
- GameStop shareholders
- GameStop the company - e.g. employees
- eBay shareholders
- eBay the company - for example its employees
…aren’t necessarily aligned.
If GAME buys EBAY - it’s an exit for the EBAY shareholders, which is easy for them to evaluate as it’s presumably a $ premium over the share price today. If GAME then runs the company into the ground trying to free up the cash to pay off the acquisition debt, as most leveraged buyouts do (especially where retail is involved), that’s not a problem for those already-exited shareholders, though it is probably a problem for employees of either company.
As long as they keep the fraud volume below like 5% of sales, I feel like it's just a numbers game, where they just need to get as much sales onto their platform as possible to give them enough operating margin to cover their costs (including fraud) and provide profit.
Admittely, I have no idea how well they're doing at that, I haven't looked at their financial statements or anything.
They already have the position of used buying and sales, extending that into in store receiving and listing of items on eBay makes sense. eBay being in decline as well.
>K-Mart buying Sears ruined that company
Both were quite dead by the time that happened.
I've seen some say for authentication but staffing employees able to perform that authentication at even a fraction of existing GameStop stores would be extremely expensive (unless it's terrible authentication) so it again devolves to basically being a UPS store but for eBay shipping items out to be authenticated. Similar to what GameStop does with Pokemon cards and PSA grading except you can't really slab a Rolex or handbag so the authentication is only good so long as the good remains in the hands of the authenticator.
The only small service I think they could offer is a way for sellers to certify what's being shipped to avoid contests, but having that in every GameStop store is also very expensive for a cost they currently just shift onto sellers by siding with the customer. eBay could easily implement that if they wanted by partnering with UPS stores or a program where sellers video the packing or something.
They could build AI to help authentication and just identifying sellers would help tremendously with fraud.
That’s why the popular perception is that the Kmart transaction and Lampert killed it, even though their lot had really been cast 15+ years before, when they stopped innovating, and really stopped investing in their stores completely, without getting serious about e-commerce either. That poisoned their brand, which made it really hard to imagine turning it around.
Still, department stores in the US are nothing like they were in their heyday.
Why do they need to buy eBay to do that?
I agree that if GameStop were basically rebranded as eBay brick and mortar stores, that might work. I guess I just feel like if it were GameStop itself that were managing it then it would be unlikely to actually work.
It's not like digital storefronts are new; I think GameStop should have been pivoting the moment that Steam started getting traction.
I am unsure how a Gamestop/eBay storefront would do. Physical manifestations of "eBay stores" have existed in the past and none of them did very well long term.
At least my shipping broker in Canada uses small retail stores as dropoff points and then has a network of gig courier delivery companies they send stuff to for last mile delivery. Saves a lot on shipping costs.
I’ve noticed they don’t really integrate with gig couriers for last mile US shipments, just a few consolidators for mid-mile (eg: UPS Mail Innovations that uses USPS for last mile)
Might further delay delivery times but I use eBay to save some dollars in exchange for delayed gratification.
Which means an eBay store would never make sense for my type of buyer or seller because I would just go to one of the many other existing entrenched retailers for regular things.
I know eBay pushes hard for regular retail but ultimately I see it as a marketplace for less fungible items and that’s what it excels at. Regular retail for regular items is easier because the user experience is always standard.
GameStop is trying to sit in the middle and trying to move product that is a little more fungible (previously used games and now more trading cards and collectibles) but I just don’t know how big of a market it is when you have to factor brick and mortar upkeep. I don’t want them to take down eBay in an experiment.
A key here I think is the easy gradual transition here because Gamestop already has the used games business they could slowly integrate that into listing used games on eBay that were received at stores and then add related categories step by step with collectables and consumer electronics. There'd also be options of ebay items delivered to store which increases store traffic and doesn't involve giving strangers on the internet your home address, and there might be opportunities there to enter logistics and lower delivery costs for people.
For the benefit of all the people on this thread not understanding what the proposal is for the acqusition: "A leveraged buyout (LBO) is the acquisition of a company (typically by a private equity firm) using a significant amount of borrowed money (debt) to meet the purchase price, often 60% to 90% of the total cost. The target company’s assets are used as collateral for the loans, which are repaid using the company's future cash flows."
I remember working in a CD Warehouse in the early aughts. Our store was next door to a Game Stop. The woman who worked at the Game Stop would come over and chat music with me when her store was slow. We used to joke about how both of our industries are seemingly dying a slow death. Console and game prices were going through the roof at the time. Compact Discs were being replaced by downloadable music. A few months before I quit, we finally started reselling DVD's to buoy the CD reselling part of the store.
As it turns out, the gaming industry outlasted the CD reselling business by quite a bit. lol
Couple of highlights on Ryan
- Built and sold Chewy from a startup to the largest ecomm acq of all time - Became #1 individual shareholder of Apple early on - Bought a 10% share of Gamespot in 2020 becoming largest personal shareholder - Took over as CEO after being a proactive board member, works for no salary
Similarly, his strategic initiatives at Gamestop have all been failure (e-commerce push, NFTs, digital games platform, crypto investments, ...). The only thing that has worked is aggressively cutting costs, mainly by shutting down stores, which was a plan that had already been proposed by BCG before Cohen came onboard.
Basically, he has done nothing except for taking credit for a plan that was already in motion and repeatedly diluting shareholders to raise funds that have been sitting in T-Bills ever since. There is no indication whatsoever that this guy is some kind of business genius who would be able to run Ebay better than the current management - quite the opposite actually.
Ahh. 100b https://investor.gamestop.com/news-releases/news-details/202...
Working for no salary is almost never charitable and is almost always just part of a larger tax avoidance scheme.
Not to say the "no salary" thing isn't silly anyway, of course.
In 2026? Online shopping is full of low quality knockoff crap, with deveptive listings that are trying to trick you. Yes, I absolutely prefer physical stores again. In fact I've pretty much stopped online shopping altogether again
They can't afford $56 billion - the proposed acquisition was going to be halfway paid for in stock and halfway via a loan. (Though, they also can't afford $28B in stock - the entire company is only worth $10B - so the idea was going to be to pay for it by issuing new shares of the merged GameStop-Ebay entity, after the deal was signed.)
If that sounds audacious, it's because it is - as far as I've seen, most analysts were not expecting this deal to be taken seriously, and many are calling it a publicity stunt.
GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen gets a performance pay if the market cap goes up:
> The total award consists of stock options to purchase 171,537,327 shares of the Company's Class A common stock at a price of $20.66 per share.
Tranche Award% Market Cap Hurdle EBITDA Hurdle
1 10% $20 Billion $2.0 Billion
2 10% $30 Billion $3.0 Billion
3 10% $40 Billion $4.0 Billion
4 10% $50 Billion $5.0 Billion
5 10% $60 Billion $6.0 Billion
6 10% $70 Billion $7.0 Billion
7 10% $80 Billion $8.0 Billion
8 15% $90 Billion $9.0 Billion
9 15% $100 Billion $10.0 Billion
eBay market cap is $48B.
https://investor.gamestop.com/news-releases/news-details/202...
The Performance Hurdles will be adjusted by the Committee equitably and proportionately as determined by the Committee in a manner designed to preserve the economic opportunity provided under the Award, (a) higher to account for acquisition activity for which stock is provided as consideration; and (b) lower to account for a split-up, spin-off, dividend or other distribution (whether in the form of cash, shares, other securities, or other property) or divestiture activity, in each case, that could be considered material to the achievement of the Performance Hurdles, as applicable.
https://www.sec.gov/ix?doc=/Archives/edgar/data/0001326380/0...
"We are asking our stockholders to approve an amendment to our Third Amended and Restated Certificate of Incorporation, as amended by the Certificate of Amendment dated June 2, 2022 (the “Existing Charter”), to increase the number of authorized shares of our common stock to 2,500,000,000, and correspondingly increase the number of authorized shares of all classes of our stock to 2,505,000,000 for the reasons discussed below. Our Existing Charter currently authorizes the issuance of 1,000,000,000 shares of common stock and 5,000,000 shares of preferred stock."
Edit: Also, the fact that company leadership can get away with this kind of thing, fleecing retail investors for millions/billions of dollars, and face no consequences is...I dunno. I guess it's just normal now. Lawlessness, bribery, favors to the right politicians, lying without hesitation or remorse. People in media clutching their pearls over whatever the Gen Z kids are getting up to on TikTok while this shit is going on is just the icing on the cake.
eBay’s biggest issue is their declining online shopping marketshare. They’ve gone from owning nearly the entire market to just losing it.
So, if they have a ton of scammers now, I would think customers are not being that impacted, and I would have also thought that eBay wouldn’t have too hard a time getting the sellers to pay the refunds, since they tend to withhold the funds from sellers until a little while after the delivery is confirmed.
I can't believe all those hundreds of thousands of listings would continue to exist if there weren't some kind of pay off. Somebody's got to be making money somehow, as it's been happening for ages.
Also, it makes searching difficult. Can't really sort by price anymore, because the lowest prices are almost entirely scams.
It's just a much less pleasant platform when half the listing are fake. This is most extreme on GPUs and RAM, of course, since that's where the feeding frenzy is happening, but it's true of many categories with expensive goods.
The buyer protections don’t really vary much, but it’s true in some countries they get more protections but it’s more regarding to buyer’s remorse rather than Items Not As Described.
> or otherwise get paid via some unprotected method
At least in North America (and maybe everywhere else), you’ve been required to pay via eBay for all transactions for the last decade or more. No more money orders, bank transfers, cheques or wire transfers or cash. And you can’t easily contact sellers/buyers directly anymore, it’s all through the platform and they block a lot of suspect messages/keywords.
(I couldn't believe myself at first seeing things like these happening and this clip in particular, how does one get millions of dollars for such an disastrously wild interview to me feels quite off to me)
Then I watched the video.
> I would trust that guy to make a sandwich.
Don't worry, we are just trusting him with around a measly 11 billion dollars.
This isn't even the worst part by the way, somehow the worst part to me feels like there are people who watched that interview and then somehow got even more convinced within this person/gamestop and publicly glaze him.
To them, I have a question like, are we watching the same interview? How can anyone watch that interview and then consider it in any way positively or anything like that, like huh, have we watched the same interview?
Perhaps some of us at first (like within that HN discussion) were/are trying to justify as if it is some massive brain effort by gamestop or anything and its a 5d chess move ,but to me, this interview showed me what the reality is actually.
It's pre-ChatGPT, so people actually wrote all this out (they are reddit posts disguised as books)
https://fliphtml5.com/bookcase/kosyg
Also an fun long form video for anyone interested
The interview was so bad the first time I saw it I thought it was some sort of satire bit. No, it was real and the commentators were literally speechless.
Drugs might explain many things.
Not much different than me having a bit of cash and putting 5% or 20% down to buy a home or car: now I’m a big asset and debt holder and you got some pieces of paper with dead presidents on it.
That was the hard part of the deal: will (enough) eBay shareholders want to be GameStop shareholders.
eBay shareholders would be right to be upset with eBay management. eBay has treaded water in a niche of online shopping while online shopping has grown massively. Whether GameStop is their solution or not, Iunno.
eBay is doing fine.
Today Amazon is down 1.8%, or down ~$52b today.
EBay is surviving but blew the online shopping wave, despite having owned (and created?) a big proportion of it.
(Dilute the religious share holders to have them finance the deal)
TLDR: half cash, half stock.
What a bizarre interview that was. The least damaging interpretation is he was intentionally being bad to spite CNBC in a basically (though their explanation doesn't include this) childish fit for earlier bad coverage of GME.
The CEO made it seem like he himself didn't know how the math for the offer worked, and even when presented multiple opportunities to correct that impression, he made no attempt to convince anyone otherwise.
The reason is pretty apparent. They are bagholders. People like this show up in every thread about Gamestop boasting about how amazing Cohen is in a weirdly personal manner, and have a very fantastical view of how things are going to go -- because their investment depends on it, and they built a literal cult around the idea that GME would make them rich, which necessitates viewing reality a little differently from the rest of us.
Edit: Where Ryan Cohen comes in: https://youtu.be/5pYeoZaoWrA?t=6629
Kind reminder to donate to archive.org: https://archive.org/donate
This helps because google captcha now sometimes require android phone qr code scanning etc. so I have uploaded the article on archive.org
[0]: I am creator of htmlpipe which archives archive.is pages on archive.org
(I was gonna add it as a comment below bstsb but it seems to have been detached now so can't comment on it)
of course the offer wasn't serious. did anyone see the interview GameStop CEO did with Andrew Ross Sorkin? he clearly didn't have the money and was trying to gaslight the world.
Probably more people than ever have thought of starting a shopping search on eBay than ever (outside pandemic shortages).
So he's basically looking to launder his freshly minted meme stonks into legitimate real company stock. It's shocking they don't want it.