Sat down with Ryan Cohen, CEO of GameStop, to discuss his early starts in business, why he took a stake in GameStop 5 years ago, and why Ebay deserves a new home.
Thank you to @ryancohen for taking the time!
Timestamps:
00:00 - Intro
00:50 - Ryan's Beginnings in Business
05:50 - Why Pets?
12:20 - Why Enter into Gamestop
15:59 - Gamestop's Future
18:21 - Gamestop's Retail Community
23:10 - Collectibles TAM
26:09 - Why Ebay
30:45 - Ebay's response to the offer
36:20 - Ebay's Live Studio Play
38:00 - Agentic Commerce
41:08 - Rapid Fire
In Germany, a talented 14-year-old earns his club money. In America, his parents pay the club $15,000 a year.
That single inversion explains why "we will not" is the most accurate line ever written about US soccer.
FIFA built a global system for this. Training compensation and solidarity payments send a cut of every transfer fee back to the clubs that developed the player, from age 12 onward. Develop one future pro and your academy gets paid for a decade. Barcelona's La Masia, Ajax, every Bundesliga academy runs on this logic. The kid is the asset.
US Soccer refuses to enforce those rules. When Seattle's Crossfire Premier claimed its $60,000 share of DeAndre Yedlin's transfer to Tottenham, it got nothing. Claims on the Dempsey and Bradley transfers died partly because the federation couldn't even produce the youth training records.
So American clubs earn zero dollars when a kid turns pro. They earn when a kid enrolls. Which makes the parent the customer, and the product is whatever keeps the parent writing checks: travel tournaments, hotel weekends, $500 showcase events, private training at $100 an hour. Elite pathways run $8,000 to $20,000 a year. A comparable academy spot in Italy costs about 120 euros.
Follow the incentive one level deeper and it gets darker. A club dependent on fees can't cut its weakest paying players, so rosters optimize for retention over development. The scouting pool shrinks to families who can afford the cliff, which appears around age 11, exactly when development matters most. The country runs a talent filter sorted by household income instead of ability.
Every four years someone proposes fixing this. The proposal always requires the people profiting from the $15,000 model to vote themselves out of business.
They will not.
Genuine question: am I going insane? That Konsa tackle on Adu* is the most red card penalty red card foul that has ever taken place and it's like nobody is talking about it. Did I miss something
"I appreciate (Becky Hammon), no cap. The words she said about can't win with (Jalen Brunson) being a '1A', '1B', 'he too little', all that did is fuel that n***** bro…He know what she said."
— Mikal Bridges. 🗣️🔥
(h/t @ClutchPoints / @jsmove7)
GameStop reports highest quarterly net income in company history of $389.6 million. Highest first quarter operating income in GameStop’s history of $143.3 million. Net sales grew 14% year-over-year, driven by collectibles. Cash, marketable securities, digital assets and related receivables, and collateral pledged for derivative asset of $9.7 billion.
https://t.co/BAu3T6V9w4
Sell me your shares, you whiny little bitch.
I'll vote yes so you can stop crying about Ryan Cohen to mostly bots and NPC's on the internet.
The man says he wants to get paid if he can 10x everybody's money. And you wanna vote no on that? You're *actually* retarded.
Let him cook.