GoDaddy bought Mike Berkens domain portfolio MostWantedDomains.com

[NameClerk]

Godaddy purchases 70,000 domain name portfolio from Mike Berkins (Worldwide Media).

I'd love to know the details of this deal. Mike is known for holding out for top dollar. I'm also curious what Godaddy's plan is for all these domains. They acquired another 200,000 earlier this year from Marchex.

http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/...addy-bolsters-domain-name-portfolio-with.html

http://domainnamewire.com/2015/12/0...erkens-worldwide-media-domain-name-portfolio/

 

[Kate]

it seems that everyone is exiting the game. At the same time the gTLDs have launched and flooded the market. Coincidence?

Not everyone, you quoted just a few persons/entities, but there are more.

I also think this a great vote of confidence in .com, coming from the world's largest registrar. While they sell new extensions too, they do not seem to believe that .com is dying and is the past

 

[wwwweb]

in the past two years buydomains sold, marchex sold, berkens sold, rick schwartz sold porno.com and retired.

it seems that everyone is exiting the game. At the same time the gTLDs have launched and flooded the market. Coincidence?

These guys are reaching the age, where people who have done well take a step back, reflect on things, and do other things. They have nothing left to prove, they made it.

Godaddy has more sales data then you can ever compute in your life, they didn't spend 8 figures in fear of GTLD's. If you ask anyone with a QUALITY .com portfolio, they will say times are good, ask anyone with a high premium renewal GTLD portfolio today, they will shake their head, and shrug their shoulders.

Today .com is still king, I can't predict the future.

 

[Nile Patel]

These guys are reaching the age, where people who have done well take a step back, reflect on things, and do other things. They have nothing left to prove, they made it.

Godaddy has more sales data then you can ever compute in your life, they didn't spend 8 figures in fear of GTLD's. If you ask anyone with a QUALITY .com portfolio, they will say times are good, ask anyone with a high premium renewal GTLD portfolio today, they will shake their head, and shrug their shoulders.

Today .com is still king, I can't predict the future.

Yes he is right most of the big portfolio holder in domain industry are not young and has not that same energy when they was young and buying names by waiting for auction to end 1 or 2 hours in past.
Plus to sale 70k names takes lots of time and you can use today's fund and may be grow it faster investing somewhere rather then wait 5 more year to sale that 70k names and wait for the funds to come in.
For Godaddy it is not only just buying 200k or 70k name and make profit selling that name , guess if they sale 270k name to 200k different business they have 200k new customers whom they can sale hosting , marketing and tons of other services which even easily cover their wholesale price loss and that new customers can stay with godaddy forever compare to domineers moving name from godaddy to other registrar when they get promo codes.
One more point godaddy is no more private company and has team of directors to take final decision compare to past when one guy bob was taking decision based on his knowledge and expertise in this industry, now you have a team of different mind set and very hard to convince them to invest in something new which has not proven record.
I think godaddy's move will be good for all .com holders and all small domineers who was worried about this new gtld expansion, this sales prove new gtld investment from big corporation not going to happen soon.

 

[kawalsukhi]

Good luck to the MIKE!!

 

[equity78]

Makes sense for Godaddy, they already distribute domains in all sorts of ways, and have some of the best buying/selling domain stats of anyone. They should know what they're doing.

Makes sense for Berkens, a no-hassle exit strategy at the right time for him.

Would love to know the details of the transaction but we probably never will.

It's the 3 year anniversary of the sale, as for the details, Mike owned 105 three letter .coms, close to 70,000 domains,
DomainInvesting.com covered the purchase price of $35.5 Million. The credit goes to George Kirikos:

According to a series of tweets from George Kirikos this evening, GoDaddy “*definitely* paid $35.5MM for Mike Berkens domain portfolio.”