GameStop is a zombie company. As a retailer, they have been floundering for years and still are. But as a corporation, they are sitting on a lot of cash and zero debt, from the early-pandemic period they went through as an overvalued meme stock.

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.