According to an ESPN report the New Orleans Hornets are going to become the New Orleans Pelicans, meaning that someone just won the domain name lottery with Pelicans.com
The domain name Pelicans.com as fellow south Floridan Scott Ross points out on his Facebook page, is owned by a “little known San Diego cover band, The Fabulous Pelicans” who appears to be in a position to get a “money windfall” by selling its domain to the NBA or “instant Internet traffic surge” to its own site.
As of time of publication the site Pelicans.com has an Alexa rank of 21 million and according to Compete.com gets less than 1,000 visitors a month.
We will check back in a couple of months to see how much traffic increased to the site if the report is accurate.
This is somewhat reminiscent of the domain name TeaParty.com that was also owned by a band for a long time before becoming a hot political term.
In the meantime if any other sports franchise is thinking about renaming itself to to a animal, mammal, or bird can I would suggest Manatees
I think the pro leagues have a policy against paying a lot of money for the dot com team names. I totally thought the NBA would buy Thunder.com but given past history with Cowboys.com and other generic team names, I would be willing to bet even if a renaming happens there will be no high offers and they’ll just use pelicans.nba.com.
P.S. here’s an thread about Bobcats.com and the negotiation – http://www.webmasterworld.com/domain_names/3453947.htm?highlight=msg3454217
Agree with Roy. Pro-sports teams don’t spend money for their teamname.com. The official site will be on NBA.com/pelicans just like all the other NBA teams. The change in value and traffic will increase but not as much as you are making it out to be.
Interesting to see that Greg Douglass from the Steve Miller Band is their lead guitarist.
Is it April? I had to double check because that has got to be the worst sports team name I have ever heard in the history of sports teams!! Who dropped the ball on this one? How many people are going to want to buy jerseys with the name Pelicans on it. Fools I tell you, Fools!