Donuts beats its previous records for a new top level domain sale.
New top level domain company Donuts has sold the domain name Online.Casino for $510,000, a record for a publicly-disclosed sale of a second level domain under a new TLD.
The sale tops Donuts’ previous record-setting sales of home.loans for $500,000 and vacation.rentals for $500,300.
Donuts completed the all-cash transaction in June.
“It’s another large sale to an end user and we’re excited to follow their site launch next year,” Matt Overman, SVP of Sales for Donuts, told Domain Name Wire. “We expect big things from online.casino similar to home.loans and vacation.rentals.”
Overman was not yet able to disclose the buyer.
Some other casino domains have sold for high prices recently. Casino.online sold for $201,250 in March 2017. Last month Sedo sold Casino.ro for €220,000.
The online.casino sale does not appear to be connected to these other sales, at least as far as I can tell from Whois.
Congratulations to the owner. It was fun to hold the top spot while it lasted, but all things come to an end. The URL is a solid left right combination and should do really well. It has to be a tricky industry and nerve wracking regulations, but if they can clear those hurdles – it should be a fun ride for them as it is for us.
You do realize you wasted $500,290 for a domain that bleeds all the traffic to the .com, that is just waiting to eat all your ad dollars as it has better content, better position, and more overall user appeal What were you thinking man, I can assure you if you could hit that refund button you would do so in a second.
Online.Casino they can magically get their money back very quickly.
Not even close – not even remotely – sorta – close. Since the day that we bought https://www.vacation.rentals I have woke up with a smile on my face that never leaves.
We are closing in on 1500 listings, 3,000 registered users, 800 plus videos on our YouTube.com/VacationRentals channel and 50 top10 search terms – first page for Google. Including the gold term for vacation rentals – which has been on the 1st page of Google now for 8 straight months, 8.
All this since the 15th of May, 2018.
Many people are breaking their dot com addiction – I couldn’t be happier.
You are only fooling yourself. I searched your site for Los Angeles for Jan 9-11th stay.
Your site came back with 3 results, and one of them was in san diego.
Who in their right mind is going to use your site when you come back with 3 results for their disneyland vacation.
You obvioulsy have no clue what you are doing, and at least your daddy got it right, to bad you wasted his money.
ASK ANYONE HERE, DONUTS WILL TRIBUTE YOU AT THEIR XMAS PARTY THIS YEAR, AS THE SUCKER BUY OF THE YEAR. They totally played you on this deal. There was only one buyer for this domain and that is vacationrentals.com, and they passed.
You are stuck with second best forever, nobody wants to be second best. You can’t afford to advertise because you know where the traffic is going. I know my words are a bit harsh, but I am trying to make you understand the path you are going down is an impossible feat.
Last I checked, people still want .com, and won’t take the matching gtlds for 5 cents on the dollar in most cases.
The GTLD program shot itself in the foot with massive inclusions, reserves, big premium renewals, and bad contract framework.
You do realize if Donuts wants to up your renewal to $120,000 per year, they don’t even need to notify you, simply the register where your domain is registered, and they don’t even have an obligation to notify you. There is no cap on the price increase per year they can put on it. You had no clue right. It’s a bad contract, hence the bad overall market performance for gtlds.
I know it’s harsh, but that is the only way people get it. Sorry for your loss.
Okay Mike – you win.
I am only responding to let you know that I have already leased the domain for 10 years so that is off the table for the next decade.
Not worried about DisneyLand as we are killing it with DisneyWorld. Land will come later.
Go to Florida – we have a ton of listings https://vacation.rentals/kissimmee
Anyway, like I said – you win.
@ Mike
Your dot com bias (…and 80% of my portfolio is dot com) has blinded your ability to do basic math.
It reminds me of how the peanut gallery have consistently told the lawyers how stupid they are for buying niche law-related names. Even if they spent $150K for a gTLD name that makes perfect sense, everyone bashes them. Except for the fact that ONE SINGLE client/case can make up for that fee many times over.
So not everyone is as stupid as you’d like to think they are.
I wrote the story of the Video.games domain name sale when that sold for 183k and was 2nd highest newG sale ever at that time.
I remember asking the owner about that renewal pricing and bringing up same potential issue in renewal pricing skyrocketing whenever Regjstry felt like gouging him.
He said when he bought it they wrote a contract up saying it will forever only be at $XX range per year.
I would assume as a buyer that has to be 2nd on your list, (after initial reg price) when negotiating with registrar.
So, i didnt think that could be done but learned they do it.
@Mike Wow, what a bitter reply, and what an ignorant attitude “it must be so, because I say so!”… I can only guess you’re sick of closing your deals in X,XXX range…
@ Michael Kugler
I’m certain that you made a very wise investment.
Dot com is no longer the only game in town, and so long as you keep building your business, the franchise value will dwarf the price you paid – probably by 50x – 100x.
The obvious reason why has nothing to do with your listings (or not), but that you’ll be a ripe, niche site for your larger competitors to acquire.
All the best of success to you. And I commend you on your foresight.
@ Genie
Rest assured GTLD’s were all the rage when the registries released them, and promised an era of new world order, and the death of .com.
I probably own more GTLD’s than you, and have sold more GTLD dollar amounts than you, but I am smart enough to know when to throw in the towel, and have the stats to see the slowing trend in inquiries, and interest. If you fail to admit that then you are biased. You could truly own a 80% three keyword .com portfolio, who cares, doesn’t match quality with quantity.
The marketing dollars have stopped, and so have sales, you don’t sell your domains for 1 cent, or 10 cents, or even 99 cents if times are good.
IF this guy paid $500K for vacation.rentals, and now leased it out for 10 years, doesn’t mean he is going to get paid for the next 10 years, somebody took essentially a 1 year option, and if it doesn’t work out they walk away. Looks like uniregistry would have unwritten that lease, which means they take their full fee upfront, plus a $40 per month maintenance fee. Most likely this guy hasn’t gotten paid anything that constitutes any sort of rate of return.
Gene is easy to speak general knowledge, take real facts, real reasons, real numbers from my comments, I know this industry if vacationrentals.com wanted this, all they had to do was pay $250K, and just forward it. They failed to do so, so what makes you think more. This guy has 3 listings for all Los Angeles, and none are in the downtown core, as well one is in San Diego, and he is cool as a cucumber, the math doesn’t add up.
Sometimes the truth hurts, I don’t pretend to know it all, but facts matter, and they just don’t add up in this scenario.
The casino one can make their money back with compulsive gamblers, and automated software all day long.
Half a millon dollars.
Wow!
And to think the reverse newG domain name (Casino.online) sold at $201,250 just last year.
Casino keyword is phenomenal. And that”online” keyword just keeps kicking A$$.
Congrats to buyer and seller.
Congrats to buyer and seller. Excellent name to build a business on.
OnlineCasino.com is way better IMO.
Too many of these registry sales have kickbacks. I don’t really believe them. The Michael Kugler sales talked about in the comments seem 100% legit though. Dude loves his domain, let him love his domain.
This shows how big the online casino industry is getting. I’m glad I was able to get Cotai.casino at reg fee a few months ago.
This is just an example of a rare exception to the overall reality. Rick Schwartz is certainly right about the overall reality, but a small batch of rare gems among the new TLDs are the exceptions. And “gems” does not mean whole TLDs, generally speaking. It means rare individual domains within a TLD. I will be the first to agree this domain is worth $510k and more. 7 figures would have been appropriate too. It still only accentuates and complements the value of high quality .coms and does not do the opposite in the slightest.
@John
You’re spot on.
Most of the GTLDs are headed out to pasture.
But certain domains like this one, online.casino, have lasting power.
Maybe 50 other domains within the GTLD spectrum. Poker.online, etc Casino.app (maybe) Porn.online, etc
This is great news & congratulations to both parties on this sale!
Any domain extension that looks ‘clean’ reads well from left to right, is easy to say and spell, looks good in print, has my vote..
I look forward to hearing all about it when Andrew does the interview
Erwin
Let me guess, the next sale will be $515,000? It’s all staged.
I highly doubt this sale but I may be wrong.
Now your domain in .com is great, but social.casino is not an exception at all the way online.casino is.
Well that’s huge sale for a non famous tld. Keep it up. Hope we see a good .club sale soon.
It’s a great sale, a few days ago to make a comment on rick’s blog.
I write that the gTDL domains with an investment of $ 0.99 to $ 1,000 in new registration, after 60 days you can get a sale of $ 500 to $ 100,000.
The question I ask is that the same does not happen with the domains (.com) of new registrations where, after only 60 days, you only have to pay a maximum of $ 150.
I invest in (com) but I invest more in gTDL and expired (com) the profitability is maximum.
Happy Day. Jose.
The online gambling industry is worth over 50 billion US dollars today, and expected to grow by 20% until 2020.
@Mark Thorpe – Sure onlinecasino.com is a better domain in many peoples eyes, but it would probably be 10 million USD or something crazy to buy.
casino.com was sold for 5.5 million USD around 15 years ago, and today I can not even guess the price, let alone how much money they make from that domain.
With that said, I think this domain will be worth way more than 500k in a few years.
so, where the $510,000 go?!
the bureaucracy for first domain named never publication. and you just wasted. TLD is only .COM, .NET
Any comment with this domain name ? >> Obtrude.com
I have Satoshi.casino and I noticed Bitcoin.casino sold for $28k back in 2017
Your opinion in my domain would be appreciated.
Very Few Supreme Domains Indeed. I was fortunate enough to snag Sold.Network & Odds.Network I would love to hear your feedback on both of these Domains.