Steve Eisman said eBay Inc. (NASDAQ:EBAY) will “of course” reject GameStop Corp.‘s (NYSE:GME) $56 billion takeover offer.

The take echoes Michael Burry, who sold his entire GameStop stake last week and posted “never confuse debt for creativity” to his Substack.

eBay is roughly four times larger than GameStop by market cap, which makes Ryan Cohen‘s half-cash, half-stock pitch at $125 per share a stretch even with TD Securities‘ $20 billion “highly confident letter” backing the financing.

The Math Does Not Work

“The odd thing about this potential deal is that eBay is four times larger than GameStop,” Eisman said on the Real Eisman Playbook.

eBay’s board has questioned Cohen’s ability to deliver a binding, actionable proposal. Baird analyst Colin Sebastian put the odds of success at “relatively low” in a Monday note.

Cohen’s response has been to auction his personal stuff on eBay to “pay for eBay,” listing 36 items including a GameStop mug, a square of GameStop carpet, and a pair of used Adidas socks that hit $14,188 in bids.

Each listing came with a hand-signed copy of his takeover proposal.

eBay banned him for putting “the eBay community at risk.” Burry’s reaction on Substack: the bid “just went hostile.”

The account was reinstated less than 12 hours later.

What The Traders See

The Polymarket contract on whether GameStop closes the acquisition by year-end sits at 22%, with around $350,000 in trading volume since launch.

Kalshi sits a touch higher at roughly 24%, but the read is the same: the apes are alone on this one.

GME slid almost 8% the day the offer landed, with the market punishing Cohen’s bid. EBAY popped over 5.5%, far short of the roughly 30% jump that would have priced in a high-confidence close, consistent with Polymarket’s 22%.

In the same podcast, Eisman gave a warning about private credit. Private equity firms that bought software companies in the cheap-money era are stuck.

The companies are now worth less than the debt used to buy them, and lenders will eventually force sponsors to put up more equity or walk away.

Eisman has been skeptical of leveraged deals struck on the assumption that rates and multiples stay where they were. GameStop’s $20 billion financing letter, taken on to buy a business four times its size, is the same kind of bet.

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