Fusible.com was the first blog in the Domain industry to report about the auction of Gambling.com, shortly after reading a tweet sent through Calvin Ayre’s web site announcing Media Corp had retained Sedo to sell Gambling.com.
Hours earlier, Media Corp had issued a press release through BusinessWire: ‘Whilst the Group has received a number of very significant indicative offers for www.gambling.com, the Board believes that a formal auction process with the World’s leading domain name broker will achieve the best possible outcome and valuation as Sedo is uniquely positioned to present the domain to global gambling brands and other qualified buyers.’
Purely a Domain Sale?
Gambling.com, if you recall, sold for nearly $20 million in 2005. However, the sale wasn’t purely a domain sale.
According to Sedo back in 2005: ‘The sale of Gambling.com turned heads when it hit the multi-million dollar mark and sold for 20 million dollars. Also included in the sale were benefits of a direct mail database and affiliate program connections.’
In 2010, will Gambling.com even close to its multi-million dollar sales price from 2005?
Back in 2005, Casinomeister wrote about the sale.
“Gambling.com is the number 1 listing on google.com for “Gambling” search and has over 500 other internet and affiliate sites linking to Gambling.com globally. It also has extensive expertise in direct mailing and has built a double opt-in database of over 200,000 members.”
Times have changed. Gambling.com is no longer the number 1 listing. Though type in traffic is always a nice perk, long term businesses want to own the search engines.
What are people saying?
Over at Gambling Portal Webmasters Association, the site that was originally tapped to auction Slots.com, members are a bit skeptical that Gambling.com will get anywhere near that $20 million price tag. Here’s a look at some of the comments:
Graham says, “20 million?? I just don’t see this as good of a domain as something like onlinecasinos.com, sportsbetting.com, casinos.com, etc. where the people are coming to the site knowing exactly what they want to do. Gambling is too broad and I don’t think would convert that great, nor have the player value that some other terms might carry.”