Ironic eight-figure deal marks more Euro-registrar consolidation
Slovakian registrar WebSupport, which is run by a local politician, has been acquired in a reported eight-figure deal.
The acquirer is Loopia, a Swedish registrar backed by Danish private equity firm Axcel.
The deal seems to have closed around the same time as Loopia’s acquisition of .SE Direkt from Swedish registry IIS, though news only broke today.
WebSupport reportedly hosts around 173,000 domains, though it’s not clear whether it acts as registrar for all. It’s not ICANN-accredited, but it does resell domains in a wide range of gTLDs.
It reportedly has annual revenue approaching €4 million and sold for “a two-digit figure in millions of euros”.
According to Vladimir Vano, Slovakian comms chief at CentralNic, which acquired .sk registry SK-NIC last year, WebSupport is the largest .sk registrar.
There’s a certain irony with WebSupport being sold into foreign hands.
The co-founder and majority owner of the company is Michel Truban, an entrepreneur-turned-politician who was closely associated with a campaign to have UK-based CentralNic’s acquisition of .sk blocked.
It was alleged (and denied) at the time that the campaign was party-political, though its main concern appeared to be that CentralNic would bastardize .sk into some kind of horrible domain hack.
Today, Truban wrote on his blog “I’m selling WebSupport and I’m going into politics”. In 2017, he co-founded the liberal Progressive Slovakia party.
He said the money from the deal would free him from inappropriate influence by “oligarchs and patrons”.
Google Translate says Truban wrote: “I had an offer that was about a million euros higher, but I declined it. Because it was from people with bad history and at the same time I wanted WS to get an international story.”
CentralNic now owns .sk after $30m deal closes
CentralNic has just closed its acquisition of SK-NIC, the ccTLD operator for Slovakia, the company announced today.
The London-based firm announced the deal back in August, when it was to be worth €21.27 million up front, with a deferred performance-related cash payout of €4.85 million cash over three years.
But the deal, originally intended to close in September, was delayed by legal “complexities” and restructured from an asset purchase to a purchase of SK-NIC, including its liabilities, in its entirety.
The purchase price is now €20.27 million in advance, with €5.85 million deferred. That’s still a total of €26.12 million ($30.67 million).
The acquisition is unusual in that it sees a ccTLD transferring to control of a foreign entity, and was opposed by many in the Slovakian internet community.
A petition was organized calling for the transfer of .sk to a new independent body with more community and government oversight.
There had been fears that CentralNic would do to .sk what it has to Laos’ .la — repurpose it to mean something other than “Slovakia” — but CentralNic told DI that it will no do so.
The deal means .sk will move from its outdated old registry infrastructure to CentralNic’s standards-based EPP platform, which should make it easier for registrars to integrate.
It’s also likely to mean it’s going to be much easier for non-Slovaks to be able to register .sk domains.
SK-NIC currently has about 360,000 domains under management.
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