Dallas Cowboys Suck, But Cowboys.com Now Available for Sale via Sedo

It looks like rookie Sedo domain broker (but veteran domain investor)  Dave Evanson has scored a touchdown with this recent catch. According to the landing page on Cowboys.com, the domain name is now for sale with Evanson quarterbacking the transaction.

The Cowboys.com domain name has had an interesting recent history. Previously it was a country western website, and it then went to auction at the TRAFFIC conference. A representative for the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys had the winning bid of $275,000 at the live auction, but it turns out that he apparently thought the price was $275 rather than $275,000. It was later sold at the silent auction to a group of domain investors.

The group originally had some big plans for the domain name, but any time you get a group of A-type personalities on a project, it can be difficult to make headway. As the saying goes, it looks like there were “too many chiefs, but not enough firefighters.” You can see two videos from the Cowboys.com party embedded below (via YouTube).

If you are interested in bidding on the domain name, you can visit the Sedo listing or contact Dave Evanson by sending an email to dave.evanson@sedo.com or by calling 1 (617) 499-7222.

Rick Schwartz, Darren Cleveland, and a fake horse.

Eric Rice and Darren Cleveland

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

27 COMMENTS

  1. How many domainers did it take to make a landing page?

    Via Rick’s blog:

    “The talent the domainers have will make Cowboys.com a premiere site on the net. An opportunity thrust into our laps and being the entrepreneurs we are, we jumped on it. The rest is history and it will be written about for years to come. The site comes with the trademark for cowboys.com which has been a western wear site for the last 10 years.

    Congrats to this new team of investors. They saw opportunity and seized it. The American dream is alive and well and this will go down as one of the worst decisions in corporate history.”

  2. I would have liked to be a fly on the wall when the guys brain stormed on how to take advantage of all the traffic coming their way – without stepping on NFL toes.

    Too many chiefs and not enough Indians involved from day one.

  3. Or… here’s a thought, the traffic is unusable!

    Let me see, lets buy a name that the traffic follows the dallas cowboys football team ( for the most part and someone prove me wrong please ) I do recall traffic being heavily football related and fluxing during on/off season.

    What we need to learn from this venture is how it isn’t so much about the name as it is what people are looking for…Epik does good work but they’d have to convince football fans looking for team merchandise to dress up like John Wayne instead.

    From what I recall hearing when parked it was doing less than $1k a month ( again someone prove me wrong ) therefore in todays market it still is a 6 fig name but more toward $1XXk.

    Not saying it wont move for more as we apparently have plenty of fools with money in this business.

  4. The main problem is that that is really is a football domain and not much else, there is nothing that can really be developed on it that is ever likely to amount to much, other than the football team using it. Trying to sell cowboy boots isn’t going to produce a decent ROi unless the purchase price is very low.

    Personally I think they’ll be taking a loss on it if the want to sell. The transaction made no sense at the time and the market was far stronger back then.

  5. I think it’s a Derek Jeter / NY Yankees situation. The Yankees need Jeter for his connection with Yankees fans and he needs the Yankees because nobody else really wants an aging, low range shortstop.

    The Dallas Cowboys are missing out on tens of thousands of people who navigate to Cowboys.com, who may end up going to another site like StubHub or SportsAuthority.com where the Cowboys would make less revenue. The owners need the Cowboys to buy it to maximize the sales price.

    Are the Dallas Cowboys, the team that built a HUUUUUGE new stadium worth a TON of money, going to miss out on this opportunity again?

    There must be an intelligent web/marketing manager on the Cowboys staff who can tell them that it will be worth the price. At least I hope there is…. well, I guess if their horrible record is any indication of their hiring capabilities, perhaps my assumption is wrong.

  6. Elliot, just thinking out loud but do you think the Dallas Cowboys lose any business by not owning this name? I am not arguing the fact they “should” own it but rather if owning it just saves their fans time or captures sales otherwise lost.

    If you wanted to go to a yankeee game or buy a jersey and when visiting yankees.com discover it wasn’t their sitr, would you simply give up, do serious buyers just give up?

    I have recently started to ” get it ” now, get that these types of situations in particular don’t require the end user to own a reflecting dot com.

  7. @ Josh

    I think they lose a lot of money…

    If you visit Cowboys.com for tickets to a game, and you’re like “wtf is this BS?” You go to Google and type in Cowboys vs Giants tickets and you come across Ticketmaster. The Cowboys would still make some money as they do on all ticket sales, but they would have to pay an intermediary.

    BTW, I have no investment in this domain name.

  8. As far as I read the BOYS have sold out every home game the last 20+ years straight so sales are hot but… without knowing the behind the sense ticket business for them we cannot conclude because every ticket is not a direct sale they are missing out on anything. The point of initial sale was still the Dallas Cowboys, so they are not missing any extra cash that resellers are making because frankly they couldnt charge those rates. When I vist TM etc and buy a ticket from a seller they still had to pay the BOYS.

    Honestly that is one major arguement (tickets) that still will not hold water at the end of the day. Fact is the Cowboys already had in excess of 50,000-60,000 season ticket sales of a possible 80,000 before moving in to the new stadium, I imagine now they are nearly sold out.

    Are they losing some ticket sales, perhaps some but still not convinced because we cannot test the traffic to see exactly what they want/conversion rates etc.

    Also we have to assume someone types in cowboys but not dallascowboys.com the official site and heavily marketed.

  9. Josh, I am impressed. Finally someone puts some thought into a questions instead of the standard “they are stupid, they don’t understand traffic / domains, and they are losing a ton of money”.

    Instead of buying the name they could just create a Cowboys App and never even use a domain name. How does that make you feel about the long term value of domains?

    Also, you can’t assume that the people who type in Cowboys.com never make it to the official site.

  10. Im 100% CONFIDENT that the owners of this name could make more than their purchase price each year in profits on selling the western form of ‘cowboy’ related merchandise. Clothing, equipment, classifieds, dating, rodeo tickets, advertising, seriously it would be huge and make both the Dallas Cowboys or a half million domain sale look like small beer.
    Of course how you would structure an entity that is the world’s cowboy empire would be another matter entirely.

  11. “A representative for the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys had the winning bid of $275,000 at the live auction, but it turns out that he apparently thought the price was $275 rather than $275,000”

    Quiet possibly the dumbest mofo ever sent to buy a name. Imagine sending someone, plane ticket, hotel room and all for a name that they thought was within a $275 budget.

  12. OR… maybe they arn’t dumb, used a phone and were always going to back out and used the ocassion to make their presents felt… just sayin.

  13. “Previously it was a country western website, and it then went to auction at the TRAFFIC conference. A representative for the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys had the winning bid of $275,000 at the live auction, but it turns out that he apparently thought the price was $275 rather than $275,000.”

    Please let me LOL

  14. I’m one of those who look at this & hear about money they are loosing & can’t see it. Since I was child I’ve known their brand as “Dallas Cowboys”. Their brand is strong & they have DallasCowboys.com I haven’t visited their site in like over a year. I’m not even a football fan, living in the US anymore & I can still remember their URL.

    The Cowboys.com domain is good if they had it, but I’d actually assume their domain would be DallasCowboys.com. As a web surfer I’d think that Cowboys.com would be about some old westerns which I’m not into.

    If you’re a Dallas Cowboy’s fan & you’ve been on DallasCowboys.com & can’t remember the URL, you shouldn’t own a credit card. Think about it.

  15. So the Dallas Cowboys will pay millions per year for some second string players that only get into the game when the game is a blowout, but they won’t pay $275k for their domain name?
    No wonder they can’t ever go anywhere in the post season (or regular season this year) with that type of management.

  16. “they won’t pay $275k for their domain name?” – um, it isnt their domain name, never was and probably never will be. I agree with the poster who says why would they even want ‘cowboys.com’ anyway. The Dallas Cowboys are a certain type of ‘cowboy’ – namely they are from dallas, and play football. Plain ‘Cowboys’ encompasses such a far more massive set of products and services – frankly anyone turning this name into a website for 1 FOOTBALL TEAM would be nuts, and leaving some serious money on the table. Just my professional opinion, such as it is.

  17. This is actually a funny story, NFL’s Dallas Cowboys agent thought it was $275, I’m sure his trip was for more than that let’s say $1275 and the lawyer who said “sorry we made a mistake” is paid more than that too. I think it’s a nice score for the investors. maybe they can selling cowboys boots on it or some other products other than the NFL’s Dallas cowboys official products and ticketing. i’m not a lawyer but i think that that side of business cannot happen without consent of the Cowboys.
    The only thing the cowboys need the domain is for a better branding other than that, i dont think they care obviously sending some dumb a$$ to make a joke.

  18. (IMO) As much money the Cowboys organization makes, they can’t fork out $274,000 to purchase the domain name of their team. They would probably even get actual cowboys to the site.

    IMO,the $274 price the Cowboys assumed the domain cost proves why the team is terrible – poor decision making. Most professional teams are smart enough to purchase their domain names.

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