Internet platform Sedo, a leading online domain marketplace and monetization provider, announced Thursday that it had overseen the sale of Poker.org for $1 million, easily the largest .org domain sale to date. The domain was sold by National A1 Advertising.
The buyer of the domain was PokerCompany.com, a self-titled “Super Affiliate” that works in conjunction with online casinos, poker rooms, and websites. The company also operates a number of sites, such as EveryPoker.com, BlackJack.org, Craps.net, and Rakeback.org. Right now, there is no indication of what the site plans on doing with the Poker.org domain.
“Poker.org is an integral part of our growth strategy, and will provide great dividends now and into the future,” said a spokesperson from PokerCompany.com.
Prior to the sale of Poker.org, the highest .org sale was $198,000 for Engineering.org, followed by Sexe.org, which sold for $151,400. The sale price of Poker.org is smaller than those of some of the largest .com sales, which include $14 million paid for Sex.com, $10 million for Fund.com, $5.1 million for Toys.com, and $3 million for Candy.com.
The Poker.org sale corresponds with a trend in .org domain registrations, which saw an 11% increase in 2009. The .org top level domain is now the third largest generic domain, after .com and .net, Sedo said, with eight million registered names.
“We expect to see growing demand for .org domains, as organizations and individual investors are recognizing their full value and potential,” said Kathy Nielsen, director of sales at Sedo. “We reckon it has more to do with making sure that no other company recognizes the full value and potential of an applicable name, but that might just be us.”
A plethora of poker-related domain names are for sale across the internet, ranging from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars. Some of the domains for sale on PokerDomainNames.com, for example, include LeisureOoker.com, pkrseries.com, poker-nations.com, and monsterpoker.org.
The importance of the unique identity of a domain name is often overlooked. You might recall Bodog, a company that had already branded its name in poker, losing control of its flagship domain name Bodog.com in September 2007. Bodog owner Calvin Ayre was forced to launch a new gambling and poker web site due to a legal order in a patent infringement dispute with 1st Technology LLC of Las Vegas. Ayre lost most of his Bodog.com domain names and poker players had to go to NewBodog.com to play.
Ayre changed the domain name to BodogLife.com before recovering the Bodog.com domain name in June 2009. The NewBodog.com and BodogLife.com domain names now redirect to Bodog.com.