eBay Gets Final Approval to Close Its $1.2 Billion Depop Deal
eBay's acquisition of Depop is now on track to close. The UK Competition and Markets Authority cleared the deal on July 15, 2026, confirming it would not refer the transaction for a more detailed Phase 2 investigation. The regulator had opened its formal review in June and invited retailers, consumers, and other interested parties to submit views on the potential competitive impact. It concluded there were no grounds to escalate the inquiry, removing the last significant obstacle to the deal closing.
The acquisition is now expected to complete around July 30, 2026. The CMA decision followed regulatory clearances in Australia, the US, and Germany, making the UK the final jurisdiction requiring approval before the transaction could proceed.
How This Deal Came Together
eBay announced plans to acquire Depop from Etsy in February 2026 for $1.2 billion in cash. For Etsy, the sale represented a significant write-down. Etsy originally paid $1.62 billion for Depop in 2021 at the height of pandemic-era resale enthusiasm, and has since been simplifying its portfolio to concentrate resources on its core handmade and vintage marketplace. Etsy CEO Kruti Patel Goyal, who led Depop before taking the top role at Etsy, noted that the company's buyer demographics had been aging and that younger cohorts were not joining the core marketplace in sufficient numbers. Selling Depop and redirecting proceeds toward Etsy's own platform was framed as the higher-return capital allocation.
For eBay, the deal is a direct play for an audience it has struggled to attract. Depop had 7 million active buyers as of the end of 2025, with nearly 90% under the age of 34, and more than 3 million active sellers. The platform generated approximately $1 billion in gross merchandise sales in 2025, with close to 60% year-over-year growth in the US specifically, which has become Depop's largest market despite the platform's London origins.
What eBay Plans to Do With Depop
eBay has been consistent about one thing in its public statements on the deal: Depop keeps its name, its brand, its standalone app, and its culture. The platform will not be folded into eBay's main marketplace or rebranded. That commitment matters because Depop's value is almost entirely tied to its community. A platform where 90% of buyers are under 34 and where the social-first discovery experience is the core product differentiator is worth considerably less if it becomes a subcategory tab on eBay.com.
The practical integration will happen at the infrastructure level. eBay plans to bring its Authenticity Guarantee program to eligible Depop listings, extend its financial services and shipping solutions to Depop sellers, and apply its operational scale to improve the buyer and seller experience without changing the front-end product. eBay CEO Jamie Iannone described the combination as giving Depop access to eBay's global capabilities while allowing it to continue doing what it already does well.
The financial reality, however, is that eBay does not expect Depop to contribute positively to income until at least 2028. The acquisition is a long-term positioning move rather than a near-term earnings driver, which has kept analyst scrutiny elevated, particularly given the separate pressure eBay faces from GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen's reported interest in pursuing an eBay takeover.
Why the Resale Market Justifies This Kind of Investment
The strategic logic behind the Depop acquisition becomes clearer when you look at where the secondhand apparel market is heading. The US market alone is projected to reach $78.8 billion by 2030, according to ThredUp's most recent annual resale report, and every major platform is expanding its secondhand offering right now. StockX launched its used sneaker and vintage apparel listings in June. A coalition including H&M, Primark, ThredUp, and Etsy is actively lobbying for sales tax exemptions on resale clothing. Tilt, a live-auction resale app, raised $26 million in June with Vinted Ventures leading the round.
eBay has operated in secondhand commerce since its founding, but its user base has skewed older as newer, more socially-oriented platforms attracted younger sellers and buyers. Depop gives it a community it could not have built organically at this point. Building a platform with Depop's demographic profile from scratch in 2026 would take years and cost considerably more than $1.2 billion.
For sellers currently on Depop, the most important signal from the acquisition is the explicit commitment to platform independence. eBay has gone out of its way to say Depop stays Depop. Whether that holds as the integration deepens is worth watching, but for now the structural reason for eBay to preserve what makes Depop valuable is straightforward: the moment the platform starts to feel like eBay, the Gen Z sellers who built it will leave for somewhere else.
