According to the Media Options newsletter I received this morning, the Pelicans.com domain name is now for sale with a price of $125,000. I think this is interesting because it has been reported that the NBA basketball team in New Orleans will be renamed from the Hornets to the Pelicans. In fact, Yahoo Sports revealed the what is said to be the new logo.
It appears that a Louisiana-based web designer owns the longer domain name, NewOrleansPelicans.com, although I am not sure if he bought it on behalf of the team or on his own. Whatever the case may be, the team would most likely want the shorter Pelicans.com domain name.
At the present time, Pelicans.com is owned by a band called The Fabulous Pelicans. They’ve already changed the url for their website, and if you visit Pelicans.com, you’ll be forwarded to PelicansBand.com.
Three years ago, I shared the percentage of exact match domain names owned by NBA basketball teams, and nearly 80% of teams owned their exact match .com domain name. Since then, it doesn’t appear that any of the teams that didn’t own the .com were able to acquire the matching .com domain name.
The New Orleans Hornets own Hornets.com, and it’s very likely that if they do change nicknames to the Pelicans, the team will want to buy Pelicans.com. Now would be a good opportunity since it appears to have just come on the market.
The owner of Pelicans.com has owned it since 1996 (original registrant). He has been receiving so many inquiries on the domain since the announcement of the name change by the NBA team that he decided to just give in and sell it.
We are also reaching out to other potentially interested parties such as the manufacturer of the Pelican industrial and high impact containers and cases used by the military, photographers, scientists, etc…
The Bobcats bought Bobcats.com for $50k back in 2007: https://www.domaininvesting.com/nba-team-buys-bobcatscom-for-50k
The NewOrleansPelicans.com was registered in 2008 so it definitely wasn’t registered because of the basketball team. The owner of the Pelicans.com is going to have a great pay day considering the name is now worth a whole lot more than it was previously and since the New Orleans Hornets are the only team owned by the NBA it is almost guaranteed that they will pursue the name to help promote the new team name. I am still shocked over the name choice. This has to be the worst name ever chosen in the history of all professional sports. The lingerie football league picked better names.
Mmm, that got me thinking.
Since the team is owned by the league, maybe they won’t want to spend too much on the name considering they probably gave to get each expense approved by the other owners?
Maybe I’m missing something, but given the ownership situation, maybe the league won’t even get the ok to spend 5 or 6 figures on the name
The payday only comes if the NBA team decided to pay up. Others in the industry will not pay the same magnitude in dollars, that the owner has now that he has been emailed by ever domain reseller in the business.
Utah has the rightful name for this team, they should switch names… JAZZ
The NBA owns basically every dot com name associated with the teams except for just a few like magic,com, wizards.com, jazz.com and a couple others that they don’t own. The names are owned by NBA media ventures and that is why every single name redirects to the main NBA website. So seeing that they own all of the other names and that they actually own the New Orleans franchise than it is guaranteed that they will buy the name. They bought every other one so why wouldn’t they buy the name of the team they actually own.
Interesting, I didn’t know that. Thanks for the information