After a quick research on the matter, I believe the report by Rick about this sale is not truthful. It makes no sense from every angle you look at it, and here are the main reasons:
1. The basics: As noted previously here, “Before the page on his blog was removed in the last 12-hours, he stated: "The domain itself is priced at $1.8 Million (that was also the listing price) and then I get 10 years of royalties which will be another $1.8 Million." I'm quite surprised that no-one has noticed this."
Lol. So Rick did not even explicitly say that he sold the domain (why is he so reluctant), instead he said it was priced at xxx, and that he expects to get xxx royalties. And then he said "But you can't unring a bell. This is a solid deal." So solid, it is not reported anywhere independently.
Further, Rick is still the owner of the domain according to Whois. Why? Why would a company pay $1.8 (or double that) and not even ask for ownership of the domain? Have you seen something like this before at these levels?
2. Value: Bestodds .net and .uk sold for $1K or less only. I argue strongly, that the domain bestodds .com simply is not worth 7 figures. One does not need to be in the industry for 20 year to see that. The two word combination of bettingsodds however has a stronger connection. But “best” can be followed by countless of words and no other best[some word].com domain sold for over 1 million in history, it appears.
3. The product: The sold domain is now what looks like a one-person managed wordpress themed site with a dozen articles and affiliate links, and an amateur Instagram page. Would you expect from a company with a budget $3,600,000 just for a domain, to have a stronger team and operation? Had they relied on their affiliate links to cover the so called sale price, they can expect to wait 1800/3600 years to achieve this.
Look, there’s no denying that this man has amazing domains which he got early in the game and obviously had great sales, but it doesn’t mean everything is true because he said so. So I join the users who doubted this, including DOMAIN ILLUMINATI and others. This “news” rather undermines Rick's general credibility. If he wants to shed better light on this, he's welcome.
What may have happened, is he got some collaboration offer to use the domain, or decided to do something with it himself, and then posted the baseless declaration that he sold it for twice the asking price. Why would he do it? Perhaps to maintain the reputation that is so important to him as a domain kind. Some people need this social affirmation, I mean, very few people call themselves "kings" and display a picture of themselves next to a fancy crown. A virtual one, that is.
