ngTLD Sales Apr 23 – May 22

Each month we take a look at "new" global TLD (ngTLD) domain sales reported in the Namebio database.  While the Namebio database certainly does not include all sales (see below), it is highly respected, updated daily, and includes statistical data, making it the best source for reports such as this.

This is the third monthly report we have done, and it has been a pretty great month for ngTLD sales.  The total value as well as the total number of domains sold (102 vs 27), number of major sales over $10,000, and number of different extensions represented in the sales, were all significantly up.  The average sales price did go down slightly, $3096 vs $4980 in the previous month.

During the monthly period ending May 22, 2018 there were

• 102 recorded ngTLD domain name sales;
• The average sales price was $3096, while the median price was $1000;
• 51 of the sales were for $1000 or more;
• In terms of major sales, 6 were for $10,000 or more;
• The highest price sales were my.bio for $61,002, go.exchange for $30,000, BroadwayTickets.nyc for $25,000 and my.tax for $22,500; 
• There were sales in 23 different TLD extensions during this period;
• Sedo (35), Jiangsu Bangning (30), Global Registry (14), Flippa (8), Alibaba (6) and Dynadot (3) recorded multiple sales during the period, while six other marketplaces had a single sale. 

This month saw sales in 23 different extensions (compared to 18 the previous month). There were significant increases in .top and .nyc sales, but there are reasons for both (see below). Several extensions saw their first significant sale this month. Here is the breakdown by number of domain sales reported in each extension.

• bingo 1
• bio 2
• casino 4
• city 2
• exchange 1
• global 14
• guru 2
• kitchen 1
• live 1
• lol 1
• london 1
• nyc 16
• pizza 2
• porn 1
• red 1
• science 1
• shoes 1
• tax 1
• tips 1
• top 42
• tours 1
• vip 1
• work 1
• xyz 4

During this month the .top registry shared over $3 million in sales with Namebio, a portion of which were sales from this time period. This accounted for the large jump in reported .top sales, but even if all .top and .nyc data were excluded, this would still have been a strong month. An auction in .nyc accounted for the increase in sales with that extension.

An interesting twist was that although there were 102 sales in this period, that was in only 101 different domain names.  A.pizza sold twice during the reporting period, both times on Flippa.

So far in 2018 there have been 401 Namebio reported ngTLD sales with an average sales price of $6411.  Note that this is as Namebio report sales dates. Both home.loans for $500,000 and The.club for $300,000 are listed as 2018 sales, since they were reported in 2018, even though the sales terms were completed in 2017. On the other hand, vacation.rentals that sold for $500,300 is not reported in 2018 in their database.

On a NamePros discussion regarding sources present in the Namebio database it was pointed out that most registries seem to have largely stopped reporting, and no doubt there are many registry sales not represented in the database. The Namebio database (or at least the portion publicly reported) does not include sales with value less than $100, nor sales from a number of venues such as Undeveloped or Efty (unless buyers or sellers report them individually), nor from most of the ngTLD registries, so it is difficult to estimate how complete a record this is of all  #ngTLD domain name sales. For example, there have been no .club sales this month or the preceding one, even though clearly a large number of sale in that extension have taken place.

One of the points that continues to surprise me is how, after a long period without significant sales, a high value sale suddenly takes place.  For example, prior to the sale of my.bio for $61,002 the highest reported .bio sale was $7000 (for the single letter i.bio domain name back in December 2015).  Namebio only had 5 recorded sales of any size in the .exchange extension prior to the $30,000 sale of go.exchange. This sale easily eclipsed the late 2017 sale of btc.exchange for $12,500. Past sales are not always a good predictor of future sales in the world of ngTLD!

Here are links to the preceding reports in case you want to do comparisons:

• Period ending April 22
• Period ending March 22

We will issue our next report in late June, and it will cover ngTLD sales for the period from May 23 through June 22.