According to a story out tonight in Chinatechnews.com, the buyer of the domain name 37.com for $2.1 Million dollars is Shanghai-headquartered 37wan.net a Chinese Gaming company
The company officially renamed the company 37 Game today.
Li Yifei, president of the company said “the market for web game exports is optimistic and it is a necessary way for gaming companies to expand into overseas markets. ”
“He revealed that 37 Game will launch its mobile game distribution in China and abroad simultaneously. ”
“By choosing 37.com as their new domain, the company aims to help global users remember their game brand. ”
My favorite quote from the article:
“He did not reply (Li Yifei, president ) to questions about the phenomenally high amount of money paid for the domain name.”
That quote was in the original article who the author of must not be aware of many other large dollar domain purchase
“The company predicted that 37 Game’s net profit in 2013 will not be lower than CNY220 million”
In Us Dollars that is $35,839,320, profit.
Guess they could afford the $2.1 Million.
The best part (not mentioned in the article): They got the domain for free, essentially.
The day after the news of the acquisition was made public, their stock jumped 10% – that’s the max daily rate allowed in the Chinese stock market – thus generating a worth in excess of what they paid for the domain.
Acro
Well that is a great point, well worth a post on your end, you are quite right
Nice find Mike, excellent observation Acro.
strange. they didn’t opt for 37.game 😀
Actually this observation was made by George Hong, who unlike me, speaks fluent Chinese. Another thing I learned: red color in the Chinese stocks means the stock is up.
No brainer in securing the name/domain. Better now at that price than after the Company becomes even more profitable. Interesting branding with the numerology. In China, 3 & 7 symbolize “lucky” and 3 & 7 together signify “unified family”
Hello MHB,
Not just China, but all the BRIC nations, as well, covet the .COM Business Model. These rapidly developing contries have embraced the .com business model as their silver bullet to maximum Market Penetration.
Looks like Rick Schwartz’s steadfast position on the .COMs Strategic Marketing superiority are manifesting, in hard ROI numbers, as he and others have predicted. CHEERS
Gratefully, Jeff Schneider (Contact Group) (Metal Tiger)
.Game is in contention and there won’t be any two character new gTLD’s for a long time