According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, and also reported in Tech Crunch, Liberty Media has paid $100 million to acquire a controlling stake in BodyBuilding.com. Liberty Media is an investor in Internet holding company, IAC, parent company of Match.com, Chemistry.com, Ticketmaster.com, and many other category leading websites.
Bodybuilding.com hosts both a fitness social networking community/forum with 100,000 participants, and it is an e-commerce website with body building supplies, vitamin supplements and fitness clothing. According to the Tech Crunch article (citing ComScore figures), BodyBuilding.com received over 2 million unique visitors in November.
Domain investors often cite Hotels.com as one of the few companies that built an entire business around a category killer generic domain name. While this is certainly true, I think there are many other companies, like BodyBuilding.com, that have built strong businesses around a category killer generic domain name. A category killer domain name doesn’t necessarily have to be mainstream to become a $100 million business. Sometimes niche category killer domain names can be just as effective, as long as a solid business plan is in place.
Great news and great article Elliot!
I used this article as a base for my German post on my blog.
You’re certainly doing a great job on your blog with very fresh news. Even in Germany your blog is listed very well.
Keep going
Richard
Thanks Elliot, indeed it was a very interesting read. Gives me some additional reassurance from the real world about a few domains I have and how to develop them 🙂
From Internet Retailer magazine… BodyBuilding.com had web revenues of nearly $65 million, expecting revenue of $90m in 2007 and over $120m for 2008