Six and a half years ago – following a failed corporate sale attempt, massive financial losses, and the departure/layoffs of several key employees – I wrote about the “imminent demise” of GameStop. Now, after a five-year meme stock craze that helped shore up the company’s finances a bit, I’ll admit that the video game and Funko Pop retailer has stuck around as a relevant entity much longer than I expected.
However, GameStop’s surprisingly extended run may be beginning to end, with Polygon reporting late last week that GameStop has abruptly closed 400 stores across the US, with more store closures expected before the end of the month. This comes on top of the 590 US stores that were slated to be closed in fiscal year 2024 (which ends in January 2025) and reported plans to end operations of hundreds of remaining international stores in Canada, Australia and Europe in the coming months, according to the SEC filing.
GameStop had just over 3,200 stores worldwide as of February 1, 2025, so the hundreds of new and planned store closures don’t mean an immediate end to the company’s going concern. But when you consider that as of 2019 there were still only about 6,000 GameStop locations worldwide — about 4,000 of which were in the U.S. — the long-term trend is clear.
Read full article
notes
<a href