Value of Domain Names

I was watching the Olympics

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

I was watching the closing ceremony of the Olympics last night and the thought occurred to me that Olympic Beijing related names may have some value during the next four years.

I immediately snapped us five good ones that, surprisingly, were still available. What are the opinions on this, will these have any value?

Would it be worthwhile developing a site around this?

[chicagohh]

I read recently that the U.S. gave the IOC a broad trademark for Olympic/Olympiad related terms. As most countries participate in the Olympics it may be easy for the IOC to enforce their TM.

You may be able to hang on to it and cash in, but you could also lose it.

As a general rule, try to avoid TM domains - trust me, you will sleep better.

[jimbeetle]

Yeah, the IOC has a history of very aggressively defending its mark. They go after just about every business with the word Olympic in it, from big players down to mom and pop shops and diners.

[tedster]

They're even going after the George Bush campagin.

[thestar.co.za...]

That's aggressive!

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

There are several sites not connected to the Olympic organisation who use the word in their domain names.

[chicagohh]

There are several sites not connected to the Olympic organisation who use the word in their domain names.

I am sure of it, but if the IOC decides that they want your site or they simply don't want you to run the site - they will likely have no problem just taking the domain away from you with *zero* compensation... or worse.

[vkaryl]

BDW: this might be a wonderful opportunity for some "in your face" marketing (nicely, mind you!) with the IOC. Perhaps you should develop a truly original marketing strategy, blending background history and forward-thinking/looking to 2008. Then contact IOC and try to get up-front approval for your plans (which will cover your you-know with the domain names you just bought....)

Good luck! Keep us posted - this could be interesting....

[cabowabo]

Five years ago we did that with the SLC winter olympics and even went so far as to build out the domains and they were better looking than the official winter games site. We pushed hard to get bought out and the offers were very, very poor. We instead used them as advertising sites and barely broke even. I hope you have better luck than we did.

Cheers,

CaboWabo

[gmac17]

it's really tough to do what you want to do.

Generic domains for the olympics will be tricky for a few reasons:

1) How do you make $ off of an olympics site? Need tons of traffic.

2) Anyone you think would want to buy your domains probably wont. Beijingolympics.com, olympicsinbeijing.com, beijing2008.com or whatever you bought might seem logical, but 99% of the people will type in olympics.com, nbc.com or go to google and do a search, in which case the best sites will come up. If you have the best possible name, you might get someone to buy it.

Of course, you probably only spent $50 total so it may be worth it.....

[dataguy]

>"but 99% of the people will type in olympics.com, nbc.com or go to google and do a search"<

Yeah, but 1% of what would have to be at least a few million searches world-wide would be nice :)