.Club Domains, LLC an applicant for the new top level domain, (new gTLD) .CLUB, announced today that they have raised $3.5 Million dollars and is heading to a private auction next week.
Earlier today Domainnamewire.com reported that .Club Domains, LLC filed a Form D with the “U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission seeking to raise up to $7 million”.
It appears they raised half of that amount.
I’m not sure about the strategy of announcing an amount raised when going into an auction but I guess we will see how it goes.
Here is the press release:
Club Domains, LLC an applicant for the new top level domain, .CLUB, has signed the applicant auction agreement with Innovative Auctions Limited from Hong Kong to participate in an auction in early June. .Club Domains, LLC is currently in contention for “.CLUB” with Koko Manor, LLC who’s parent is Donuts, Inc. and Merchant Law Group, LLC.
.Club Domains, LLC, is currently in contention for “.CLUB” with Koko Manor, LLC who’s parent is Donuts, Inc. and Merchant Law Group, LLC.
According to .Club Domain, LLC’s founder Colin Campbell, “From the beginning of the ICANN process for new gTLD’s we have been focused on obtaining the .Club name, and we are looking forward to resolving contention through a private auction.
Win or lose, we believe this private auction approach allows us to either acquire the name at a fair market value, or be fairly compensated for our efforts.”
The company’s founder added, “We are happy to announce the successful raise of 3.5 million dollars for the purpose of acquiring and launching the .CLUB name.”
The funding was raised in a private placement sold to “accredited investors” as defined in Rule 501 of Regulation D under the securities act.
The plan must be either scare away the competition or setup the groundwork for a payoff to circumvent the auction or not win it but cause competitior to pay 3.5M extra for it.
JP
Well one of the applicants is Donuts which spent over $60 Million just in application fees, not sure what they value .club at but I doubt the will be scared off by $3.5
Of course that is not say .Club doesn’t have additional funding this just says they raised $3.5 Million
How much money does Donuts.co have?
On DomainNameWire.com (I think), he said donuts.co are going to enter 62 auctions for new gTLDs. At $2 million each, that’s at least $120 million to be spent on auctions. Plus they’re up against Google and Amazon for some of their more popular gTLDs, so I don’t understand how they expect to win this.
I thought Donuts.co only had $100 million in funding (including their additional capital raised in 2013), therefore how they can afford the applicant fees ($60 million), auctions ($100+ million), operational costs and services going forward. And how much money will be left over for actually marketing the new gTLDs?
I wish a financial person could answer those questions.