I want to examine whether American professional sports teams seem to value generic domain names for their websites. Surprisingly, there are a whole host of sports teams that do not own the exact keyword .com domain name of their brand, even though they are losing a considerable amount of traffic as a result. I searched NHL, NBA, MLB, and NFL team websites, and I found that National Basketball Association teams own the most team name.com domain names, and National Hockey League teams owns the least.

Since most sports team names are very generic, they are expensive to acquire. However, losing ticket sales and team memorabilia/collectibles revenue (or having to pay a commission for them) should be incentive enough to spend the money to buy these domain names, as evidenced by the purchase of Bobcats.com by the NBA’s Charlotte Bobcats last year.

By nature, American Internet users seem to default to the .com domain name when looking for a specific brand, and that holds true for sports teams. This can be witnessed by examining the public stats of generic sports domain names during the season. For example, Dolphins.com seems to spike at the beginning of the football season and then in the middle, even though the Miami Dolphins didn’t own the domain name until a recent UDRP filing that was Suspended.

It’s interesting to note that it doesn’t appear that the league or team values have anything to do with the acquisition of generic .com domain names. The Dallas Cowboys are one of the three most valuable American professional sports franchises. Yet they weren’t willing to pay $275,000 for their generic .com domain name when it was up for auction (which is a story in and of itself).

Full Article at http://www.elliotsblog.com/do-pro-sports...ames-38215