It took until the first
week of January, but the Colorado Rockies have finally made a
high-priced off-season acquisition that should leave their fans
happy. And while the �bad� news is that the pickup is not an actual
player that will help the team, the good news is that Major League
Baseball (MLB) is picking up the $1.2 million tab for the domain
name rockies.com from the Tourism Canadian Rockies portal. Thus,
clicking through that link now takes you to the official site for
the Rockies� baseball team, instead of to information for a vacation
north of the border.
The sale was brokered by
Venture Capital Group, which reported the sale was the largest for a
sports domain transaction. Venture Capital disclosed last fall that
the rockies.com domain name, would be put up for auction along with
several other Canadian tourism web assets. The auction was expected
to garner between $200,000 and $400,000 for the site, industry
expert Domain News Wire reported in late September.
As noted, the $1.2
million acquisition is the largest for a sports domain. But in
comparison to prices for all domains, rockies.com is tied with
find.com and phone.com for 51st overall. The overall record was set
by sex.com when it sold for $13 million in November 2010, breaking
the previous record of $11 million that hotels.com had set in 2001.
Getting the rights to
rockies.com was a coup for MLB, but it came at a big premium. The
most the league had ever paid for domain rights was $200,000 for
angels.com. There are now only four MLB teams that still don�t have
the right to their nicknames + .com � the Giants, the Rangers, the
Rays and Twins. And one assumes the league would like to have them
all under its ownership.
Total
domain domination, however, may be an impossibility, no matter how
much money the league wants to throw around. Giants.com is owned by
the National Football League, which means there�s probably no
possibility that baseball will be able to pry that one away.
