CNNSi.com was launched in 1997 as a collaboration between CNN and Sports Illustrated. At the time of the launch, CNN/Si Executive Producer Danny Greenberg said this of the fledgling website: “[w]ith more than 100,000 pages of content, ranging from real-time scores and statistics to the probing profiles of athletes for which SI is famous, CNNSI.com provides unparalleled access to sports information on the Internet.”
Following the demise of the CNN/Si brand, the CNNSi.com domain name expired, and it went to auction after being caught by DropCatch.com last week. The auction for CNNSi.com ended today, and the winning bid was $5,500.
The CNNSi.com domain name likely ย receives quite a bit of traffic, although I presume there is considerable legal risk using the domain name since there are two brands whose trademarks make up the domain name.
Danny Greenberg ย connected with me via email today, and he shared that CNN/SI acquired the CNNSi.com domain name for $10,000 in 1997. Back then, ย $10,000 for a domain name was a substantial amount ย of money.
It is pretty ย interesting that this domain name sold for $4,500 less than it did 18 years ago. It will be interesting to see how the domain name is used going forward.
According to Similarweb the domain gets an estimated 40k visits/month. Mainly from direct/Typein traffic. Could be a decent earner and with a Pagerank of 8 I can imagine some companies might be willing to purchase the domain purely for its link juice too.
I think the legal risk contributed to the low valued sale.
Chinese buyer, so obviously what is CNN really going to do to them, other than UDRP, they should be quick to send a message.
As long as the buyer quickly starts a business with this domain and doesn’t confuse consumers in an obvious way regarding the CNN and SI trademarks, they should be fine. Could be risking a UDRP, however, if they just list it for sale again.
Except the buyer will have to go into same niche of business.
Chinese cybersquatter, American or Euro cybersquatter, what difference does is make? they are all domainers who for the most part have no problem profiting from other peoples hard work.
I think the point the other commenter was making that filing a lawsuit would make less sense with a Chinese buyer than a buyer based in the US. Just a guess though.
“all domainers who for the most part have no problem profiting from other peoples hard work”
Really? All?
Want some cheese with that whine?
@ Jill, “All domainers” in reference to buying domains at auction, I’ve been in this business long enough to know that any mention of the word cybersquatting, most domainers come to the defense of the cybersquatter, making all kinds of excuses for him/her, Certainly NOT “all” domainers, but most, it depends on the domain.
But even the most obvious, for example we have domainers like Michael Mann offering to sell GoogleMicrosoft.com for $40,000, that’s not trying to profit from other peoples hard work? but seeing that it’s someone many domainers put on a pedestal, it cant possibly be cybersquattting.