BlackFriday.com Sale Price Revealed

Black Friday, which occurs one week from today, has become the largest in-store shopping day of the year in the United States. Black Friday is the day after Thanksgiving (November 29th this year), and many people around the country participate by doing their Christmas and holiday shopping on this day that is known for its special Black Friday sales and deals. There are countless websites that promote Black Friday and offer information about where to find good deals.

BlackFriday.com is a website that aggregates Black Friday sales and special offers from a wide variety retailers. I believe the original BlackFriday.com website was created by Reinvent, the company founded by Dr. Kevin Ham, one of the most successful domain investors of all time. In a February of 2018 post on NamePros, George Kirikos reported that Ziff Davis had acquired BlackFriday.com. I looked around, and I do not see a reported price for the domain name and business.

Yesterday, I received an email from a reader, who shared a link to a 2017 SEC filing from J2 Global, the company that owns Ziff Davis. The SEC filing provides more details about the purchase price of BlackFriday.com, including the price and the date of the purchase. Here are the two mentions of BlackFriday.com in the SEC filing:

“(f) an asset purchase of blackfriday.com, acquired on November 7, 2017, an online solution that markets popular Black Friday ads that are centrally located connecting shoppers with retailers;”

“In connection with the acquisition of blackfriday.com on November 7, 2017, contingent consideration of up to an aggregate of $1.5 million may be payable upon achieving certain future income thresholds and had a fair value of $0.8 million at December 31, 2017 which was recorded as an other long-term liability on the consolidated balance sheet at December 31, 2017.”

Mind you, this was a business acquisition rather than a simple domain name acquisition. BlackFriday.com as a domain name alone, has a considerable amount of value, but there was more to this deal than a simple domain name purchase. That said, I do not think this website would have been as popular or trafficked as it was if it wasn’t BlackFriday.com.