WHO BOUGHT THE POKER.COM DOMAIN?

18 May 2007

Reports suggest that unique domain fetched over $20 million on silent auction

In the two weeks since the Casino Affiliate Convention ended, there has been growing speculation about who bought the Poker.com domain....and how much they paid for it. The domain was part of a silent auction held during the event, in which high prices were recorded for a number of singular domains.

The already considerable interest has been boosted by news that in a seperate Monicker.com auction last weekend the domain Porn.com fetched a record $9.5million cash price. Remarkably, Porn.com was originally on the auction block at the T.R.A.F.F.I.C. West show in Las Vegas in March, but did not meet its reserve.

Whilst Sex.com previously sold for a reported $12 million and holds the official record, that price has less publicity impact as it included an equity element. Perhaps understandably, the successful bidders were not identified.

There were apparently two bidders for the Poker.com url auctioned during CAC; one was a verbal offer for $27 million and another a firm bid of $22 million - either one would establish a new Internet record and reflects the continued pulling power of the poker phenomenon across the globe. At present there has been no official announcement, and the identity of the successful bidder has been speculated upon but is not known.

Unfortunately, it appears that complications have arisen with the sale, believed to be related to acceptable proof of ownership documentation. The exact nature of the obstacle is not known, but Poker.com has a complicated and on occasion disputational ownership history going back some years.

The current difficulties may have genesis in this history, dating from the 1999 original registration. In 2001, the then owner of the holding company for the domain advised in a company report that the worldwide rights to Poker.com had been secured until 2098. The rights were apparently obtained from a company acting as the broker for the deal called UniNet Technology Inc, which bought the URL from AlaCorp Inc. (see previous InfoPowa report). UniNet is believed to have sold on the rights to the name to Poker.com Inc for $100 000 and a royalty of 4 percent on gross profits a month.

Moniker.com sold another seven figure domain, Scores.com, for $1.2 million at the Casino Affiliates Convention.

Domainnamewire reports that next month’s T.R.A.F.F.I.C. conference in New York City will be the next showcase for valuable domains. Among the domains likely to be available for auction are Bourbon.com, Student.com, HorseRacing.com, Elections.com, and Scotland.com.

Online Casino News courtesy of InfoPowa