We usually don’t hear about too many huge deals involving .co.uk domains but this one is certainly a blockbuster.
A public company in the United Kingdom purchased some of the best possible insurance and financial .co.uk domain names for a total of £4.6m, rising to up to £9m depending on performance.
Based on exchange rates, this equated to a sale of around $7, 355,500 with possibly as much as over $14 Million again depending on Performance
The domain names are simply some of the best possible .co.uk domains.
Included in the sale:
Mortgages.co.uk
Investments.co.uk
CreditCards.co.uk
LifeInsurance.co.uk
HealthInsurance.co.uk
CarFinance.co.uk
Savings.co.uk
OnlineLoans.co.uk
HomeInsurance.co.uk
Moneysupermarket said the acquisition would provide “a platform for the group to broaden its brand offering to a wider range of customer segments in the money and insurance (divisions)”.
This company appears to be the Quinstreet of the UK.
Its a great acquisition and should increase the companies insurance and financial products.
Of course had these been .com domains many of these would have sold individually for more than the total high side of the acquisition of $14M.
why buy them if moneysupermarket already includes alle these sections?
They own financial and insurance domains but these domains will give them additional traffic and ownership of those verticals
One of the principles of the company (seller) is an seo expert who worked for Bruce Clay Europe. This is the perfect seo strategy using the established country code brand.
Wow, very nice indeed – Interesting that a very strong established brand still sees the values in prime generics. MoneySupermarket.com advertises ALOT on TV in UK,
from an article in 2007
“We spent £6m on TV and outdoor advertising last year,” he said. “This year we intend to spend £16m. And that seems to really be paying off.”
TravelSupermarket.com is also a cracking looking site that should be a winner.
They’re going to make *a lot* more than that off those names, once developed.
Those are some of the most lucrative leadgen areas out there.
I think this makes them front runners for the ‘They Get It’ award.
A well established, successful business turning to prime domains to lead their push onward and upward.
This is great news for us all – this story will be useful to quote.
I wonder if why they went for the .co.uk instead of just trying to get the .co extension.
@Chris – the what extension? .co? Where have you ever seen that used? Muppet.
.uk is the tld for the uk. .co would be good for a Colombian business I suppose…
@ Chris
That was good …
“I get it”
LOL
This wasn’t a bulk domain sale, it was a business/asset sale. The mortgages.co.uk website on its own turned over close to 7 figures GBP annually in 2008, although I believe these figures had dropped in 2009 and 2010. I’m sure both buyer and seller used the other (underutilised) domains in the portfolio as leverage one way or another. It was not simply a sale of domain names without attached profits as this article implies.
We picked up Credit.ac & Insurance.ac today for reg-fee…”Credit-Access-Card” 🙂
ccTLD’s will collectively go through the roof, led by .co – it’s coming…
– TBC