Brand Marketing

Earlier today, I posted the news that the owner of the Pelicans.com domain name has put it up for sale for $125,000, with Andrew Rosener of Media Options tasked to broker the domain name.

While I could see more than one group having an interest in this domain name, I think the NBA basketball team would be the most likely buyer, especially given the price. The New Orleans Hornets own Hornets.com, and they likely realize the importance of owning the exact match team domain name.

NBA basketball teams have been known to spend money on after market acquisitions. The Charlotte Bobcats purchased Bobcats.com reportedly for $50,000 back in 2007. NBA franchises do not own Wizards.com, Magic.com, Mavericks.com, Nets.com, Jazz.com, or Cavaliers.com, but they own all of the others.

Although $125k is a lot of money, I believe the team is better off buying it than letting someone else get it. Do you think the NBA Pelicans will end up buying Pelicans.com? Vote below:

According to the Media Options newsletter I received this morning, the Pelicans.com domain name is now for sale with a price of $125,000. I think this is interesting because it has been reported that the NBA basketball team in New Orleans will be renamed from the Hornets to the Pelicans. In fact, Yahoo Sports revealed the what is said to be the new logo.

It appears that a Louisiana-based web designer owns the longer domain name, NewOrleansPelicans.com, although I am not sure if he bought it on behalf of the team or on his own. Whatever the case may be, the team would most likely want the shorter Pelicans.com domain name.

At the present time, Pelicans.com is owned by

I received an email from Wayfair, and in it, the company announced the pending launch of Daily Fair, which appears to be a daily deal type of website. Wayfair is a company that was built on a variety of descriptive domain names and  rebranded to its current moniker.

After reading the email, I visited DailyFair.com to see if there was a website, and the domain name appears to be parked at Voodoo with a “for sale” link on the top of the landing page. I did a Whois search, and I see that the registration went private in January.

Using my Domaintools membership, I did a Whois history search and saw that the name was previously registered to Hunting Moon, so I reached out to its CEO Evan Horowitz, and he confirmed the domain name was sold last month, although he didn’t provide any details about the buyer or the price.

Assuming that Wayfair was behind the acquisition, I am a bit surprised that they didn’t create a coming soon page on DailyFair.com in advance of the announcement. If the deal site is going to be found on its primary Wayfair website, I would have thought they might forward the domain name to that landing page.

In any event, despite the fact that the company rebranded its business, they still appear to understand the value of an exact match domain name, assuming they were behind the acquisition last month (which is unconfirmed).