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First IDN gTLD auction raises $181,000

Kevin Murphy, March 21, 2014, 10:03:16 (UTC), Domain Sales

TLD Registry today raised over $181,000 in “premium” Chinese IDN domain names.
A live/online auction coordinated by Sedo and held at the China Rouge members’ club here in Macau saw 39 lots go under the hammer, 33 of which managed to raise at least the $2,000 minimum bid.
All the names were in .在线 (“.online”), of two Chinese IDN gTLDs TLD Registry launched this week.
Each lot contained multiple names.
In all cases the ASCII transliteration, or Pinyin, was thrown in. Some lots also contained conceptually related names. So the winner of “casino”.在线 also won “gambling”.在线.
Buyers will presumably be able to split the bundles for resale.
The lot with the highest bid at the end of the day was a collection of domains related to “gaming”, which sold for $25,388. Second was a “casino” bundle, which fetched $25,000
.CLUB Domains CEO Colin Campbell spent $7,100 on “club”.在线 and related terms.
Here’s the full list of auction results. Apologies to my Chinese readers, but I don’t have a Chinese keyboard nor a source document to copy and paste the actual names that were sold.
[table id=29 /]
DISCLOSURE: I attended most of the auction and moderated a panel discussion during the lunch break. TLD Registry paid for my airfare and accommodation.


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Comments (4)

  1. Andrew says:

    Interesting that the auction was done in USD? Or are these prices converted from another currency?

    • Kevin Murphy says:

      The auction was conducted in USD. It was a mix of live in-the-room bidders and bidders on Sedo, but most of the bidders were online. I expect they just picked a currency that the majority of the participants were comfortable using.

  2. Adrian Chan says:

    Hi Kelvin,
    I am happy to help you to translate any Chinese IDN. E-mail me if you need any help.
    Great Event anyway.

  3. Kevin’s right. We selected USD as the currency for our first Landrush auction as it is a well-accepted and understood currency across China and the world.

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