The NameJet auction for SportsPicks.com just ended, and the final price was $25,660. The auction had a total of 207 bids from 163 bidders. SportsPicks.com was created in April of 1995, and it appears to have recently expired, and as such, it was not a private seller auction.
I was involved in the auction and would have been a buyer in the $10,000 range, but I have concerns with respect to US laws involving gambling. In addition, there are regulations about gambling advertising, so generating revenue may have been difficult on this particular domain name.
Currently, sports betting is legal in just a few areas in the United States (like Las Vegas). New Jersey governor Chris Christie has announced that his state is going to defy federal law and permit sports betting.
According to NameBio, FreePicks.com sold for  $91,250 in April of 2006 on SnapNames.
Sold a very similar but slightly lesser quality domain a few years ago to an overseas buyer. I had the same reservations about personally doing anything with it and have stayed away from those types of domains for the most part.
Federal law prohibits sports betting, but there are some that are trying to take advantage of a little bit of grey area about online poker. Regardless, the government is cracking down and did go after Full Tilt Poker, PokerStars and Absolute Poker last year and accused them of money laundering and fraud as they were apparently processing billions of payments from US customers while operating in countries where online gambling is legal. Not sure what is going on with the case at this stage.
Sucks that this is the case in the USA
Is namejet running an affiliate program now?
http://www.dnforum.com/f77/did-namejet-begin-affiliate-program-thread-485769.html
@ anti
Not sure – sorry.
Very overpriced domain unless buyer is an end user. Only brandable and has 3600 search volume. Thats all.
@ Arif
What do you value it at?
@Elliot
If i was an end user and had a great idea with this name would pay that price maybe twice more. However, its not a generic name, very low search volume (actually search volume is not that bad but its really low for this price, according to me).
If i was a reseller i’d pay $5K at most. Of course, that is only my idea 🙂
3600 – is the exact match, there are a ton of other terms that are close with the odd 5000-10000 searches. The important thing is that if someone is looking for betting advice or soccer tips (5-6k each) and they see Sports Picks they will give the site instant credibility and the name sums up getting advice on betting on sports.
Finally, the money to be made off of sports affiliates is high and consistent. Gamblers always gamble and gamblers always lose.
25k is a bargain