Surprising some gaming industry observers, Canadian poker domain name poker.ca sold for a highly respectable $400,000 this week. It’s now allegedly “the most valuable .ca domain on the internet,” according to the new owners.
It’s interesting to compare this to last week’s underwhelming Australian domain name sale, as well as last year’s sale of poker.com for $1 million, and the recent valuation of Gambling.com at around $9 million.
The Canadian online gambling market is estimated at about a billion dollars a year. That’s about the same as Australia. Yet the laws in those countries are different; Australia’s online gambling market is largely unregulated, and advertising is banned, while most Canadian online gaming sites are run by the governments themselves.
This particular domain houses a news resource, not a gaming destination. “It includes poker news, poker tournament results, an introduction to basic poker rules for beginner poker fans, poker strategy suggestions and tips for more advanced players, and plenty of valuable insight into the Canadian online poker community,” the news release states.