Andy Booth Reports Sale of Abby.com

This morning on Twitter, domain investor Andy Booth tweeted about a successful domain name flip he recently made. Andy reportedly sold Abby.com for $75,000. He bought the domain name in June of this year for $55,000. That would be a little more than a 36% ROI in less than 2 months:

AngelCity.com Acquired for $60,000

According to an article in the New York Times a little over a week ago, a new professional US women’s soccer team has been established. The NWSL expansion team will begin playing during the 2022 season, and it will call Los Angeles its home. A number of famous women make up the ownership group, including Mia Hamm, Natalie Portman, Eva Longoria, Serena Williams, and many others. The franchise will be known as Angel City.

Escrow.com Q2 2020 Domain Investment Index

Escrow.com published and shared its Domain Investment Index for the second quarter of 2020, and the report was fairly bleak. In fact, as you can clearly see on the quarterly comparison chart on page 2, Q2 2020 had the lowest quarterly sales volume in two years, since Escrow.com began compiling the report. The full report pdf can be downloaded here, and I want to share a few thoughts about Q2.

In Q2, Escrow.com processed $55.2 million in domain name sales, down from $85.8 million in Q1. It looks like the previous low sales figures were in the high $60 to low $70 million range. Here’s a screengrab of the chart showing quarterly sales volume since 2018:

When a Broker Can Help

I read Ray Hackney’s interview with DAN.com CEO Reza Sardeha, and he mentioned that the company is “setting up a brokerage division to provide integrated buyer/seller brokerage support.” I don’t typically need broker support when negotiating a deal, but I found myself in a situation where I think having third party assistance could prove beneficial in closing a deal.

I won a pending delete auction a week ago, and the domain name was provisioned to a registrar I have used maybe once or twice. I set the DAN nameservers but did not list a BIN price, so it showed a make offer field. I was unsure if I could even sell this domain name on DAN because of the 60 day lock on new registrations (it was deleted and re-registered before the auction), so I did not want someone to execute the BIN and end up not being able to do the deal.

WashingtonFootball.com Acquired by Washington Football Team

The NFL football team formerly known as the Washington Redskins has acquired the WashingtonFootball.com domain name. Redskins.com is now forwarding to WashingtonFootball.com, and the NFL team’s Twitter profile now includes a link to WashingtonFootball.com. Details about the domain name sale was reported by the former registrant, Cal Spears, CEO at Better Collective Tennessee.

According to a tweet from Spears, the NFL team privately acquired the domain name from him using a broker from GoDaddy. He had owned WashingtonFootball.com for 8 years:

Domain Name Sales Can Help and Can Hurt

There’s an active Twitter discussion going on regarding the reporting of domain name sales. I have made my feelings clear regarding the reporting of my own domain name sales. Beyond a couple sales I shared years ago, I do not share my sales, and I don’t really see that changing unless a buyer specifically requests this as a part of a deal.

Rick Schwartz mentioned that he is publishing an article about non-disclosure agreements, and I am looking forward to reading his thoughts: