Samantha Demetriou ⬥ 22 September
Normally, we refrain from getting too overtly political here on the DomainNameStrategy blog. And as easy as they are to make, I’m going to take the high road and remind myself that Sarah Palin jokes are passé.
But we can’t push it off any longer. The Tea Party has finally reached DomainNameStrategy.
Not the political party itself, but the domain name, TeaParty.com. A rock band in Canada named The Tea Party has owned the domain name since 1993, but since the group effectively split up in 2005 the site has been pretty much dormant. Now the band is considering putting the domain up for auction.
The BusinessWeek article that reported on this featured GoDaddy’s President Warren Adelman, who predicted that TeaParty.com could sell for well over $1 million at auction. Beginning last year, the band has received multiple offers to purchase the domain. With the Tea Party political group at the height of its popularity, now is an ideal time for the band to sell the domain name and get top dollar for it.
The reality of the situation is, certain domain names only have a short life cycle when it comes to their value. A domain like TeaParty.com, which is so closely tied to currently political trends, could plummet in value as soon as the political winds change. If, for example, the Tea Party suffers a staunch defeat during the 2012 elections, the domain will likely fetch a much lower price.
So that leaves the band in a quandary. Do they sell the domain for bank, even though they temporarily reunited for a tour over the summer and are about to tour Australia? And if they do decide to sell, who will they pass this digital gem on to? Will it be a Tea Party member or backer, or perhaps a more mischievous recipient like Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart?
There is, of course, the possibility that the Tea Party political group will have no interest in purchasing a domain name that was previously associated with a rock band – and a Candadian one at that, what with their socialized medicine and all. Remember WhiteHouse.com, the former porn site? A few years back, some speculated that WhiteHouse.com would sell for a seven-figure sum, but it turned out that all serious potential buyers remembered the domain’s porn-hosting past and chose to stay away.
Tags: Australia, BusinessWeek, Canada, Domain Name Strategy blog, domain names, GoDaddy, Jon Stewart, political party, political trends, Sarah Palin, Stephen Colbert, Tea Party, Warren Adelman