Gambling Domain Name Sales That Will Make Your Eyes Pop

High dollar domain name sales are the kind of get-rich-quick stories that web entrepreneurs dream of as they drift off to sleep at night.
After all, registering a domain name is an investment that costs just a few dollars and pay off with a multimillion dollar sale. The best known example of domain name success is sex.com which sold for $13 million back in 2010. More recently (November, 2013), kk.com was purchased for $2.4 million was purchased by someone with a lot of confidence in the staying power of web slang phrases.
In the igaming business, entrepreneurs collect and hoard dozens, even hundreds, of domain names with the hope that one of them will pay off big.
While most of these purchases pay off about as well as an afternoon at the roulette tables, a few pay off in a major way. Those big domain name sales were the subject of a recent blog post on CasinoDirectory.com titled, 10 Highest Reported Gambling Related Domain Sales in History.
The list, which only includes reported domain name sales should be an eye-opener for domain name speculators as most of the big sales are for some pretty generic names.
What the list doesn’t include are private party sales and sales that include established sites that are sold as turnkey entities on forums like ours.
On the high end of CasinoDirectory’s list are a couple names that are about as generic as they gets in this business, Casino.com and Slots.com.
Back in 2003 some lucky speculator cashed in on Casino.com to the tune of $5.5 million when they sold that domain to a Gibraltar-based igaming firm.The site is still a gambling portal today and, with any luck, its new owner has seen a sweet ROI on that deal.
Tied for first with Casino.com is another plain Jane domain, Slots.com. Just four years ago that domain sold to an unidentified buyer for $5.5 million.
At number three on the list is Gambling.com which sold in April of 2011 for a cool $2.5 million to the KAX Media.
The biggest surprise on CasinoDirectory’s list is Bingo.com. In the waning days of the 20th Century, Unibet purchased the prize domain for $1.1 million in a deal that included 500,000 shares of company stock and a 10-year, 4% revenue share.
While high end domain name sales are great daydream material, they’re not exactly the foundation for a solid business plan.
These days, affiliates are more likely to find success with a comprehensive marketing and SEO strategy that emphasizes brand building and enhancing the player experience than by cashing in a generic domain name…but that doesn’t stop them from dreaming.