GoDaddy will be sponsoring a new television show that will air on ABC. The show is called Steve Harvey’s Funderdome, and it will premier on ABC on Sunday, June 11 at 9pm. This is a reality television show where entrepreneurs will compete to receive funding. Here’s how the casting call described the new show:

“The inimitable Steve Harvey is hosting a new, groundbreaking show on ABC looking for great innovators and entrepreneurs to help fund their American dream. We’re looking for mom and pop businesses, unique and interesting products, or creative ideas that just need a little more money to jumpstart their next phase. You could win anywhere from $10,000 – $100,000, all you have to do is win over the live studio audience and convince them that you deserve to be funded.”

From my perspective, the most interesting aspect of the news is that GoDaddy is actually participating in the show, in addition to sponsoring it. I was told that GoDaddy’s Small Business Expert Shawn Pfunder will consult with contestants about their online presence throughout the season. Assuming the show is well received and completes its 13 episode series on ABC, I think this type of exposure will be helpful to the company in reaching its target audience.

Below is the press release that was shared with me. It has additional details about GoDaddy’s sponsorship and participation in the new series:

I get a ton of robocalls and spam text messages offering discounts and promo codes for web design, logo design, and web development services. This spam is annoying and can be time consuming to deal with, but I am accustomed to it because my Whois information is public. Some people seem to blame their domain registrar for this spam, but I believe it is usually done by third parties who contact registrants of recently purchased  domain names.

I recently came across a post on LinkedIn that essentially accused GoDaddy of selling their information. The person who wrote the LinkedIn article/comment said he believed that GoDaddy sold his information and he was now being contacted by other companies offering their services to him. In a subsequent comment this person mentioned that his domain name was privately registered. I did not follow up with this person, nor did I verify anything he had written to learn more details about his situation.

From my perspective, it would not make sense for GoDaddy to sell its customer information to third parties because the company offers many of these services already. Even in a situation where GoDaddy did not offer a particular type of service, it would not make sense for the company to sell customer data because third parties could conceivably try to win other business from GoDaddy by offering domain registration, hosting, web development, or other high margin services that GoDaddy offers its customers. Selling customer data seems like it would entail far greater risk than reward.

To get to the bottom of this, I reached out to