Gambling.com sold for US$2.5m
Media Corp chief executive "very pleased" after domain sold to unnamed bidder.
The Gambling.com domain has sold for US$2.5m (£1.5m) to an unnamed party, owner Media Corporation announced this morning.
Media Corp chief executive Justin Drummond (pictured) said the AIM-listed advertising network and online publishing group was “very pleased” with the result of the sale of Gambling.com brokered by domain marketplace Sedo.
The sale price however falls well short of the US$20m Media Corp paid for the domain back in 2005, before passage of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act in the US in late 2006 led to a reduction in the site’s traffic and advertising revenues.
The imposition of a Google penalty for reasons “unknown” to the company in September 2007, subsequently lifted in late 2009, also saw gross margin from the domain fall a further 62% year-on-year from £1.1m to £410,000.
Sedo also brokered the largest sale to date of a dot.org domain in February last year, when Poker.org sold to affiliate PokerCompany.com for US$1m. Bodog Brand’s purchase of Slots.com for US$5.5m last May ranked in the top ten of the most expensive domain sales ever.
Liesbeth Mack-de-Boer, CSO at Sedo, said: “The high sale price paid for Gambling.com is a real confidence booster for the global domain industry and demonstrates the value gambling companies are still prepared to place on their digital assets.”