Looks Like Intercontinental Exchange Acquired ICE.com for $3.5m

I was unable to participate in the press conference call held to announce the $3.5 million sale of Ice.com. Before the news of the domain name sale broke on DNJournal and other outlets, I had a couple of guesses about who may have been behind the purchase, but the buyer was not named.

In the DNJournal article, Ron wrote about how brokers Brian Harbin of Grit Brokerage and David Clements of Brannans put the deal together:

“After buying a few other domains through Harbin’s Grit Brokerage in the same price range, this person wound up calling on Harbin to sell a domain for him but this one was a blockbuster – Ice.com. Harbin had done some previous deals with Clements and contacted him about this exciting new listing. Clements happened to have an acquaintance he had met at a private event in his hometown, Atlanta, that he thought might have an interest in the domain. When Clements presented the opportunity to obtain the domain the buyer jumped on it, agreeing to the full $3.5 million asking price. Working with Escrow.com it then took them barely a week to complete the transaction which happened on July 6. “

After reading that quote, I did a Google search for ICE and Atlanta, and one of the top results was for Intercontinental Exchange, a company that is headquartered in Atlanta. A bit of additional sleuthing showed that the company also owned and used TheICE.com. Based on this and Ron’s article, my guess was that this company bought Ice.com. Although Whois privacy is enabled on the registrant information, the ICE.com domain name is now forwarding to TheICE.com, so it seems like Intercontinental Exchange acquired ICE.com for $3.5 million.

A good domain broker (and domain investor for that matter) should be a good networker. Sometimes domain name opportunities materialize out of the blue, and knowing a contact could have an interest in a particular domain name can be all the difference. A broker can spend weeks or months trying to find prospective buyers, but being able to connect an acquaintance with the perfect domain name acquisition opportunity can reduce the lead time tremendously. Deals like this don’t come together quickly all the time, but it’s great when they do.

A couple of years ago, I wrote about a report indicating that Ice.com sold for $3 million in 2014. The ROI on this recent $3.5 million deal may not be huge, especially when factoring in broker commissions and escrow fees. That being said, it must have felt pretty good to close a $3.5 million deal so quickly after engaging a broker.

Kudos to both brokers on this who were able to work their connections to close a deal so quickly.