closed Football.co.uk

[Shak]

The bit thats interesting about .co.uk domains is that about 4-5 people own all the top/generic/valuable domains.

There is 1 guy with such a portfolio that i nearly fell of my chair when I saw what he had.

Shak

 

[Duke]

Originally posted by Shak
Duke,

I hate to be rude, especially to such a long standing member of this forum, however I trust in future you shall do some research before posting.
Shak

Why would I want to do that? I'm not writing a term paper...just browsing the most fun forum on the internet! I don't mind taking a pratfall once in a while to keep people entertained. Welcome...and now tell us what we really want to know - how you managed to acquire all of these names? I'm sure you didn't pick them up from the Deleted Domains daily list!

 

[Shak]

Duke,

Being in the right place at the right time has helped, along with having been a .co.uk registrar equivelant.

That and getting a few lovely ladies very drunk

Shak

 

[Shak]

"Deleted Domains daily list"

No such thing in the UK, there was something similar but NO thats not how I got mine.

All above board, thank you.

Shak

 

[Duke]

Originally posted by Shak
Duke,

Being in the right place at the right time has helped, along with having been a .co.uk registrar equivelant.

That and getting a few lovely ladies very drunk

Shak

OK, now you REALLY have our attention. Forget the domain stuff and go over that part about the lovely ladies again. I want to make sure I get that right!

 

[Ciqala]

Top .co.uk registrar and from the sounds of it an international playboy

welcome to the forum shak

and back to what prez said, about those ladies...

 

[NamePopper.com]

Here I was moving threads to the proper forum - stopping fights from breaking out - and beating back the bozos -
only to find that THIS thread is where the REAL action is.

Shak - Welcome to the forum. That's a very impressive list of 'co.uk' names. Being a poor boy from the states -
I'm not all that familiar with 'co.uk' - but DAMN - you've got some great names there.

 

[Poker]

A little too much action if you ask me, this thread keeps pushing my Medicating.com thread down
http://www.dnforum.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9317

 

[davidthornton]

Originally posted by Shak
Not sure how many members are keen to value .co.uk domains, but how about helping me arrive at a figure for the following group of domains:

Football.co.uk
Cricket.co.uk
Tennis.co.uk
Rugby.co.uk
Racing.co.uk

Thanks in advance

Shak

Hi.

I've been waiting for you to turn up on here, having a read a few articles about your 'acquisitions' on various web sites.

I gather you buy all your domain names from previous owners, or from auction sites such as auctionurls.co.uk. You have science.co.uk which was an auctionurls.co.uk domain from what I remember.

UK domains can be a lot harder to sell, at least in my and other peoples' experience. You can ascertain the value of your portfolio by the number of 'enquiries' you've had regarding particilar names.

You'll obviously be familiar with the obvious names that hold the majority of the high quality generic .uk names - Name Shop (they sold three.co.uk and taste.co.uk for £100k + each), Jersey Off Shore Consulting, UKIP, that Sauna Company, CI - who love the 3 letters - and the rest that I have currently forgotten. I'd be interested to know whether these guys make many sales, since I have acquired a number of quality and specific .co.uk domain names but have found it near impossible to drum up sales on them, despite the names being very good.

Everyone I speak to seems to covert the .com, even in the UK. As has been quoted to me before 'if you're going to spend out money on a domain, you're pretty much going to want to want the .com since anything else will always be second best'.

I think I have read that you sold a domain for over £250K. Care to name the domain? I also see you've got 'business.eu.com'. I think it will be interesting to see how that fares when .eu launches.

 

[President Gringo]

seems like we are getting a better class and better educated class of domain dealers

 

[NamePopper.com]

Originally posted by President Gringo
seems like we are getting a better class and better educated class of domain dealers

I guess that means I better start showering before coming to work from now on. :laugh:

 

[Ciqala]

Originally posted by NamePopper


I guess that means I better start showering before coming to work from now on. :laugh:

in that case I better start wearing pants... (being as we have people from the u.k. and the u.s. you can take that how you like) :laugh:

 

[Duke]

Originally posted by davidthornton


UK domains can be a lot harder to sell, at least in my and other peoples' experience. Everyone I speak to seems to covert the .com, even in the UK. As has been quoted to me before 'if you're going to spend out money on a domain, you're pretty much going to want to want the .com since anything else will always be second best'.

Very interesting insight into the .co.uk/.com situation David. Being on this side of the pond I didn't know things were shaking out that way in the UK. Still Shak's names look great- and anyone would be proud to own them (even over here!)

 

[Biggie]

Looks like 'Shak' scores the big dunk.

 

[bidawinner]

Whats all the excitement over ..I thought .com was all that mattered ?

very nice Shak...

 

[dkny]

great name $7-10K for football.co.uk

 

[davidthornton]

Originally posted by biggedon
Looks like 'Shak' scores the big dunk.

The .uk market is very significantly different to that of .com. I cannot emphasise this enough. Shakil Khan's sporting .uk domain names are particularly good and definitely have a substantial value attached. However, define 'substantial'?

I think we all know that 'football.com' would be a six or even seven figure seller. However with .uk things become substantially different. The US, being many times larger than the UK, appears (in my personal opinion) to plough a significant amount of investment into sporting events on a scale that eclipses anything that occurs in the UK.

From watching US broadcasts over here, US sports (American Football as we call it, Ice Hockey, Baseball and Basketball) exist on a scale that makes the entire UK sporting scene look tiny. We've got to remember that California is bigger than the UK, nevermind the other 49 states! You've got vast arenas, stadiums and outdoor facilities spanning your country. I assume these exist in all most every major city. You also seem to commercialise more around your sporting events, with all the celebration and other promotions - e.g. the cheerleading, which is something we don't have over here much, and the Michael Buffer announcers. As a result your sporting industries are vast. The UK's, even with its Football Premier League and Manchester United, is tiny.

The UK only has a single major sports television network, aside from the five main terrestrial channels that also cover sports programming, and I assume that over in the US you have a number of different ones. I believe you even have dedicated channels devoted to particular sports.

So what am I trying to say?

If you're American, and have pretty much never ventured out of the US, your expectations of sport around the world might be squeued by what you're used to at home in the US. A friend of mine recently went to Boston and enjoyed a Baseball game. On his return he commented that it was nothing like anything he'd ever been to over here. He enjoyed it by the way.

The reality of sport outside of the US, and indeed many other things, is that there simply isn't commercialism on anywhere near as grand a scale. Therefore, as a result, quality names like those in Shakil Khan's portfolio are much more difficult to sell or even commercialise. They're great names but if they'd been .com's you could be sure that an entrepreneurial person connected with US sport would have snapped them up by now.

I definitely believe these names to be of value and of top quality. But what you cannot, and musn't, do is apply .com logic when making an appraisal. Domains under .uk simply don't sell in the same way, due to a number of reasons including perhaps a lack of commercialisation, a lack of finances, a lack of understanding of how a good domain name makes a difference (I have called companies offering them great domains and I get idiot secretaries telling me 'we've already got a domain name, so why do we need another?'), and possibly the main factor that is the UK is so much smaller than the US.

In truth I don't know how much these names are worth simply because I have not seen a great many high profile sales of .uk domains. I'd like to value each of them at six digits. However I could quite feasibly see a couple of them only ever getting low five figure offers, simply because things are different over here (for all the reasons I have explained above).

I'd like to see, and I anticipate it may happen one day, .uk improve. Give it a few years and I guess we'll see what happens.

 

[Duke]

Fascinating! Great info David. I've been to England but never got to spend enough time there to gain that kind of insight into the domain situation. A lot of us view the UK as being just like the US except with a slightly different accent!

 

[Shak]

David,

Thank you for your detailed post about the UK scene.

I know most of the players with the top .co.uk domains as was previously mentioned in a post above.

Although I do not know specific business models, I DO know that 1 of the people involved is earning £10k+ a mth purely from affiliate/advertising revenue, another has decided to do long term rentals on his domains and charging on a CPC model (cost per click) and he seems very happy with it.

Personally I turn down substantial offers every week for my portfolio, and am quite happy in the situation at present.

As for the sports domains, approaches have been made from the following type of companies (Bookmakers, NewsPaper Fantasy Football, TV station)

The market has changed rapidly and most of my clients/buyers now seem to be advertising agencies using the domains for traffic which works very nicely compared to CPC engines.

And finally, NO I can not divulge info on the name which was sold for £245k

Finally my answer is as always:

The FUN in the .co.uk market has NOT even started

Shak

 

[Shak]

David,

as for Business.eu.com

We all make mistakes sometimes, Business.eu.com was mine

Shak