What I find especially interesting about the story is that the domain appearently sold for more than twice the current reserve price in 2006.
“”In May 2005, Media Corp paid $20 Million Dollars cash for gambling.com, ten times the amount it earned the previous year.”
“The following year, the portal, which provided information on gambling to punters and directed them to other websites where they could have a flutter, generate $US5.5m from advertising.”
“However, in October 2006, America effectively banned online punting, forcing Media Corp to withdraw from the United States overnight, essentially stripping the business of any value.”
So if that story is right, the current reserve is less than 1/2 of what the domain sold for almost 6 years ago.
Its a very interesting domain with huge upside especially if the US ever lifts the ban on gambling.
TheBigLieSociety says
January 4, 2011 at 12:06 pmWith 2011 here and the U.S. FCC making changes, and many other Eco.System and platform changes coming (some at CES Vegas) it is hard to fathom the .COM domain industry continuing to support Vanity.String.Sales.
As more and more traffic-directing functionality moves closer to the user the centralized model, tied to big juicy keywords, seems doomed.
How can people with millions to spend be so unaware ?
MHB says
January 4, 2011 at 12:26 pmBig Lie
So you would say its a better investment to go after .Gambling or .Gamble and own the extension?
floridagambling.com says
January 4, 2011 at 12:34 pmGambling IS LEGAL in the US.
The individual states can (and most do) make it illegal.
TheBigLieSociety says
January 4, 2011 at 12:36 pm“its a better investment to go after…”
===
NDAs aside – Leak Control at this year’s CES in Vegas has been amazing
.CASINO may have some value and be worth a look.
In a few weeks, the big players may have disclosed more. One leak came out yesterday which was a surprise.
jp says
January 4, 2011 at 12:38 pmThe whole Gambling.com sale doesn’t make sense to me. If I remember correct, I read somewhere that the company is selling itto raise capital to build out a less-good (IMHO) gambling domain right? Perhaps I remember wrong.
Moving on, it’s a great domain and all and I’d brag about it if I owned it it’s an -ing domain. Ok so if Gambling.com is supposed to sell for 9M+ then what would be the reserve for Gamble.com, as normally the non-ing version would be like 10x better right?
Gambling.com is still a 7 figure name but I imagine it’s type-in traffic is 10% of Gamble.com at best. I also think if developed that Gamble.com will get typo traffic from Gambling.com. Am I missing something here?
MHB says
January 4, 2011 at 12:41 pmfloridagambling
online gambling is mostly illegal with the US government barring credit card companies from processing transactions
Aggro says
January 4, 2011 at 1:13 pm@ the rest
last time I read, gambling.com sold for $20M – but it came along with a business/huge mailing list.
@ jp
don’t be silly. Even without looking at any keyword tool, I know “gambling” is more commonly used compared to “gamble” (conversely “bet” is preferred more than “betting”)
Anon says
January 4, 2011 at 1:18 pmThis is probably reflective of the sector. Gaming in general is off, online is still up in the air…
As an aside to hot sector domains, I know the Castillo brothers own Bullion.com, which is a sector that’s hotter than fire, yet their development scheme seems very light in the way of affiliate relationships. What’s up with that?
MHB says
January 4, 2011 at 1:32 pmGuys
All the discussion about shows, meetings and conferences have been moved to this post:
http://www.thedomains.com/2010/12/30/our-first-monthly-domain-calendar-finds-january-jam-packed-with-shows-auctions/
Please limit comments here to the topic the sale of gambling.com
fail says
January 4, 2011 at 2:03 pmcomplete waste of money
firstly i doubt it ever made the figures theyre claiming or sold for that inflated figure
gambling
it’s like the problem, like owning alcoholism.com lol
why own this domain?
it’s the wrong keyword to want
massive fail whoever buys
TheBigLieSociety says
January 4, 2011 at 2:04 pm@MHB
What is your view on .COM annual Registry fees based on Appraised Value ?
Gambling.COM would pay ?10%? like a .MALL tenant ?
Would that be One million dollars per year to renew Gambling.COM ?
MHB says
January 4, 2011 at 2:09 pmBig Lie
My understanding is that this is no longer part of the guidebook so variable pricing for .com’s is not on the table.
TheBigLieSociety says
January 4, 2011 at 2:20 pm@MHB
What if the U.S. FCC Set.Top.Box vendors[1] charge Gambling.COM to resolve their name?
[1]Microsoft ready to take on Apple, Google with TV set top box
BetaNews – Ed Oswald – 22 minutes ago
Reports indicate that Microsoft is prepared to show off a connected television solution of its own, and will demo a TV set top box this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.”
Philip says
January 4, 2011 at 2:46 pmThe support of the dot com is good and important to all domainers “long Tail”
TheBigLieSociety says
January 4, 2011 at 2:49 pm@MHB
“no longer part of the guidebook”
===
Note, major vendors ignore “guidebooks” from irrelevant players.
Look at the IDN situation as an example. The big players are going with
Unicode DNS.
Spending millions or tens of millions on .COM domains based on some “guidebooks” (that are ignored) seems like a Gamble or Gambling.
Gambling.COM is not wired into anything or guaranteed anything.
LS Morgan says
January 4, 2011 at 4:07 pmBigLie- could you please cut down the volume and incessantness a wee bit?
Speaking only for myself, I actually do read your posts and make a sincere (albeit usually futile) effort to decipher their meaning. In spite of your being a howling moonbat in most regards, you’re clearly a lot more informed than probably 95% of the commenters on blogs like this, even if you might not articulate your thoughts in a way that’s comprehensible to people not born on the Planet Xenu.
Perhaps fire up a blog and keep it current? I know I’d definitely read a BigLieSociety blog and I don’t read blogs much, save for this one and a few in tech.
TheBigLieSociety says
January 4, 2011 at 4:29 pmDon’t miss the ICANN Show – March 2011
The .GAMBLING “guidebook” should be interesting…
://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ms9cD94rfcs
jp says
January 4, 2011 at 4:39 pm@LS Morgan
I was right there with you with BigLie, definitely peaked my interest and I read it all for a while, however if you’ll notice he never really responds directly to anyone’s comments, other than MHB, even they are not attacking him.
Notice his follow up comment to yours.
I have started to believe that he is actually a really well designed bot with Machine Learning and a massive store of data. That’s the only way I can seem to make any sense of it.
SL says
January 4, 2011 at 5:48 pmI think I actually understood BLS with the MS TV hint; here’s my WAG in simplistic terms.
Let’s say that configuration for internet access in Google TV or Microsoft TV was 100% locked down. They “hardwired” it to use a single set of DNS servers owned by each respective company. It still mirrors the main servers but the info returned for domain resolution is controlled by G or MS.
So for a site to resolve, they’d need to pay a fee to G or MS. For those who didn’t pay a fee (e.g. presumably a site like thedomains.com) the user would get a page essentially saying “the site you’re trying to reach hasn’t paid us so you can’t see it. Send them an email and let them know that G or MS TV viewers can’t see their site.”
Payment could take other forms too. Like there would be no upfront cost but to allow user access, the site owner would agree for MS or G to insert ads into their pages before serving them to the user. No revenue sharing with the site owner, of course.
That’s supposed to start a snowball effect where major site owners wouldn’t want to lose out on the huge market share of G or MS TV. And effectively skirts using completely open DNS resolution for their TV platform.
Nothing more than pay to play using DNS.
Of course the problem is that the idea is implausible in the real world as G and MS would be dooming their products to failure. When users couldn’t get to their favorite sites all hell would break loose. And there’s no way to achieve critical mass when there are tens of millions of sites out there, owned by people who would actively rebel against it.
But that’s my interpretation of his hundreds of rambling posts. But maybe there is something sinister lurking behind Google DNS mixed in with the ongoing erosion of net neutrality. Dunno.
Or maybe this post made no more sense than BLS’s.
ichc.TV says
January 4, 2011 at 6:48 pm@SL,
Within five years, every tv sold will come with an ethernet connection. We will see multiple content aggregators emerge on the web (tv guides, if you will), and the free market will determine the best from the bunch.
Apple TV, Google TV, et al, will see myriad competitors within a few short years. The web is the great equalizer.
Quality direct-to-web movies are coming, bypassing the theaters and the cable companies. Bandwidth issues need to be resolved, but bottom line is, the rules are a changin’, and only the most cunning of companies will survive. We’ll see at least 3 web-media companies come from nowhere within the next five years to stand amongst the Google’s and Facebook’s of the world…just watch.
– TBC
D2W.TV says
January 4, 2011 at 9:07 pmDirect-To-Web (D2W) broadcasting is the future of all visual media.
Aggro says
January 5, 2011 at 3:54 amLove how the scrubs manage to turn every thread into a .TV thread
Favorite Domains says
January 5, 2011 at 6:16 amI would have thought the domain is real value for betting industry (which is a multibillion industry) because I don’t think US would ban online betting forever. But it may take time for US to approve online gambling again.
Joey Starkey says
January 5, 2011 at 9:52 amI don’t see online gambling being illegal for much longer. As gambling is spreading to many more states. The companies that own this action want a piece of the online action.
It is still there just a little harder to cash out.
JMO
Joey Starkey
Memphis Domain Broker
William says
January 6, 2011 at 12:49 amIf it was making all of that money off of type-in traffic and traffic levels are similar today – $9million is an absolute steal. Only extremely conservative companies pulled out after UIGEA and it sounds like they were just an affiliate – this is the first time I have ever heard of an affiliate leaving the US market after UIGEA and all of the big ones have still been serving ads and their revenue did not disappear as this article suggests it would have.
Domo Sapiens says
January 6, 2011 at 6:52 pmThe Odds of a Sale are very High if you ask me… “several
private-equity firms and online gaming companies may be interested
in buying it, including Playtech Ltd. and bet365, the newspaper
said. ”
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-01-04/gambling-com-domain-name-on-market-for-10-million-times-says.html