.TV Auction Results: $175k in Sales

.TV auctionSnapnames / Moniker held an auction for .TV domain names last week, and the results of the auction are below. The auction grossed a little bit under $175,000.  I am very impressed with the percentage of names that sold (122 total sales), but I am underwhelmed by the actual sales prices. I thought the 2 letter .TV domain names were going to sell for more.

I bid on a few of the two letter names during the closing moments, but my domain investments don’t really deviate much from .com, so I wasn’t willing to put a few thousand dollars into this type of speculation. Additionally, since many of my clients are other domain investors, I assumed they  were likely bidding or observing and quick flips would be unlikely.

What are your thoughts on the auction and the results?

ko.tv $7,261.00
il.tv $5,500.00
hi.tv $5,000.00
gg.tv $4,800.00
stocks.tv $4,300.00
streaming.tv $4,200.00
uu.tv $4,200.00
mr.tv $3,700.00
bb.tv $3,700.00
hr.tv $3,300.00
ar.tv $3,100.00
tax.tv $3,054.00
dd.tv $3,005.00
mx.tv $2,900.00
ee.tv $2,250.00
ae.tv $2,250.00
oo.tv $2,150.00
ii.tv $2,110.00
jr.tv $2,050.00
no.tv $2,050.00
vv.tv $2,024.00
tc.tv $2,000.00
xl.tv $1,950.00
mo.tv $1,903.00
mt.tv $1,816.00
can.tv $1,800.00
bm.tv $1,776.00
ll.tv $1,700.00
tn.tv $1,676.00
jj.tv $1,663.00
ky.tv $1,626.00
ct.tv $1,613.00
tt.tv $1,602.00
ks.tv $1,600.00
sn.tv $1,600.00
fm.tv $1,583.00
iq.tv $1,550.00
er.tv $1,550.00
big.tv $1,550.00
air.tv $1,550.00
british.tv $1,500.00
hp.tv $1,450.00
hm.tv $1,402.00
va.tv $1,325.00
lo.tv $1,252.00
vb.tv $1,251.00
oh.tv $1,250.00
hb.tv $1,250.00
mb.tv $1,211.00
bg.tv $1,200.00
du.tv $1,200.00
familia.tv $1,180.00
wm.tv $1,151.00
mn.tv $1,150.00
lg.tv $1,150.00
ie.tv $1,150.00
ib.tv $1,150.00
heather.tv $1,150.00
iv.tv $1,101.00
kd.tv $1,100.00
ww.tv $1,051.00
vn.tv $1,050.00
qa.tv $1,050.00
bw.tv $1,050.00
al.tv $1,050.00
ak.tv $1,050.00
bv.tv $1,000.00
kv.tv $1,000.00
mp.tv $1,000.00
wk.tv $1,000.00
ys.tv $975.00
yb.tv $950.00
wb.tv $927.00
om.tv $925.00
ah.tv $900.00
ht.tv $850.00
mz.tv $825.00
wv.tv $814.00
set.tv $800.00
kw.tv $800.00
ho.tv $800.00
ov.tv $775.00
mw.tv $751.00
ix.tv $727.00
po.tv $716.00
hv.tv $700.00
gi.tv $700.00
32.tv $677.00
vd.tv $650.00
vm.tv $626.00
00.tv $625.00
rf.tv $600.00
rant.tv $590.00
mommies.tv $590.00
gene.tv $590.00
ej.tv $580.00
dz.tv $578.00
kb.tv $575.00
ty.tv $575.00
lm.tv $551.00
sw.tv $550.00
pv.tv $525.00
ol.tv $525.00
lp.tv $525.00
jt.tv $525.00
ax.tv $525.00
vi.tv $501.00
ym.tv $500.00
rw.tv $500.00
fax.tv $500.00
chatroom.tv $500.00
pz.tv $475.00
xm.tv $475.00
asp.tv $462.00
tots.tv $432.00
wx.tv $425.00
jz.tv $400.00
jock.tv $375.00
php.tv $350.00
ch2.tv $300.00
los.tv $300.00
nas.tv $300.00

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

38 COMMENTS

  1. I think that the sales were really nice for reseller prices and can be developed or resold to end users for nice prices. I don;t know if they can be easily flipped to other domain investors at the prices many were bought for.

    But like you said the percent of names that sold was very impressive.

  2. Pssst! Wanna buy a dotTV?
    It’s like they had an auction and nobody showed up.
    Well, end users anyway.
    Not impressed at all.

  3. My comments are based on pure ignorance and no knowledge but looks like there was one or two major winners based upon some type of metrics used.

    The prices and names almost have a pattern/rhythm to them.

    Like I said, just conjecture on my part.

  4. The market is tough right now. Too much nuclear and oil war news.

    Things were brighter just two months ago.

    As usual, people are freezing up when there is no need to, including domain investors. When domain investors see sales slow they slow buying also. Anyhow, that’s my take of it.

    It’s going to get much worse. Then it will be time to feast on domains and fill our portfolios again on the cheap.

  5. I’d also add that in uncertain times like now, everyone moves to the cream of the crop .com’s for safety.

    Don’t get me wrong, I actually like .TV domains, they are great eye candy and potentially great investments, but right now “safety” is getting popular again IMHO.

  6. Useless domains because they cannot generate any income and not store brand.

    Making more money on my marijuana business.

    Marijuana business is recession proof.

    BullS aka MarijuanaGuy

  7. “What are your thoughts on the auction and the results?”

    Same as yours Elliot: Great sell-through rate but very, very low prices.

    Boy; so many 2-letter domains under 5k.

    Confirms my decision to keep away from .tv.

  8. It appears that most participants were domain investors and not end users despite the fact the auction was promoted at the SXSW conference. So while the percentage of domains sold was high compared to most domain auctions, the sale of keyword domains was still IMO disappointing.

  9. I picked up: Php.TV for the HUGE search volume and the relative ability to rank once developed, VN.TV because VN is the CCTLD and country abrreviation for Vietnam (country of my birth). I’d rather have VN.TV than Vietnam.TV plus I can always do subdomains with .VN.TV. This auction was a no-brainer.

    I wish I had bid on Fax.TV.

  10. .TV Registry 1
    Domain Buyers 0

    Another win for a registry.

    The percentage sold is very high and respectable.

    The percentage re-sold for a profit in the future … a fraction.

    Another group of worthless names added to portfolios.

    yes, there will be one or two good stories but all of these gambles. You either sell it to another sucker or an end user. Most domainers will never find an end user so you are now left with 2 letters that mean nothing but a “rare” domain between domain collectors.

    Lot better options out there than wasting your money on these.

    Respectable results for the auction house and registry.

  11. With all these WHATEVER extensions, it has already confused lots of end users aka the public.

    The normal users don’t have a clue what all these extensions mean but they will always go to the dot com FIRST.
    I know because I have clients that only go to dot com because other extensions are SPAMs to them.
    Good for sellers but sorry for sucker Buyers aka domainers.

    Have to thank to one of my clients for asking me to hand reg the domain EarDinnerTogether.com for her catering business.

  12. Strange that the .tv guys are so quiet now. Had this been a co auction with LL names, people would have been all over this calling terrible results and saying its because co sucks blah blah blah.

    Well folks $2,000 for LL names shows theres little interest. Me thinks LL.co names would have gotten much better results.

  13. @Alan Dunn

    “.TV Registry 1
    Domain Buyers 0

    Another win for a registry.

    The percentage sold is very high and respectable.

    The percentage re-sold for a profit in the future … a fraction.

    Another group of worthless names added to portfolios.

    yes, there will be one or two good stories but all of these gambles. You either sell it to another sucker or an end user. Most domainers will never find an end user so you are now left with 2 letters that mean nothing but a “rare” domain between domain collectors.

    Lot better options out there than wasting your money on these.

    Respectable results for the auction house and registry.”

    THIS. Premium 2L keywords going for less than $2,000 …. the only winner is the .TV registry. Most of these sales were also probably to domainers, since the public/endusers won’t have a clue about this auction. So they will just be held and locked away, hoping for a prayer (resale).

  14. I wanted to bid on Streaming.tv, Hi.tv, … but nobody I asked was able to say what will be the renewal rate(for some premium it’s thousands dollars/year).

  15. @M— you re right on

    I put a dot com domain that I wanted to drop at one of the auction for just 0.01 and went up to $10.

    What does that tell you—dot com is KING!!!

    If all of you just concentrate dot com, dump all the other extensions -then the dot com value will rise.
    The registry will go out of business…Plain and simple!!!

    All it takes is one freaking news report from NY times to publish a report that all extensions are losers except dot com.

    I love suckers spending money and dreaming of some users going to buy your junk domains…ha ha

  16. I think it is clear that the .tv market has fallen since then landrush auctions last year. These would have sold for double or more back then. In fact stocks.tv originally went for 22k then and wasn’t paid for.

  17. The auction was a bit soft for sure. I was expecting 275k to low 300k range.

    Also bad timing imo with renewals and last year was gold rush, landrush. A lot of better inventory taken a year ago. Plus yearly renewals double from 10.99 to around 25 depending on where your at. even with transfers its still 20 a name.

    .tv is a part of my portfolio. You will see the shake out occuring in the .com market and correction. Great time to be buying some nice .com domains and .com works. Always has, always will.

    .tv is headed in the right direction as a whole and new players in the game. People still buying and selling .TV.

    I believe it was a trial and error approach with 14 day auction format and trying moniker out.

  18. the renewals are the killer with .tv’s

    i was an early investor and sold all my .tv’s holding on to ATL.tv as my sole investment in the .tv space.

    there has been so many promises from those with an interest in .tv (remember the “personal youtube” pitch from demand media?)

    i’ve given up on the extension and focus on branding my .coms

    it’s all about traffic and it seems easier (and cheaper) to get the .coms to rank over .tv’s

    just my .02

  19. I kid you not. I received an offer several days ago for AppetiteTV.com however in the body of the letter The person ask me if I was willing to sell Appetite.TV for what he offered!
    (he mentioned Appetite.TV twice)

    I do not own Appetite.TV – he mistyped the domain and added .com searching for my whois info.

    What does that tell you?

  20. For what it is worth I’ve actually sold some .TV domains and made PPC clicks of of others that actually paid off the reg fee.

    You know, the word “TV” is more universally recognized around the world than “com”. After all, it’s had 80+ years of branding.

    I don’t think being a .TV fanatic and filling up your portfolio with these is smart, but it is a good idea to have a taste of it in your portfolio for diversification if they ever take off. Video is coming on in a big way and .TV lends itself well to that.

  21. “You know, the word “TV” is more universally recognized around the world than “com”. After all, it’s had 80+ years of branding.”

    @ Johnny,

    Along those lines, Juan Diego Calle mentioned that CO has hundreds of years of branding with the East India Co and many other companies since the 1600s. 🙂

  22. Domains sold for fair market value, simple as that.

    The auction was publicized to qualified buyers and most did not have reserves so it was a good auction.

    I would have thought prices would have been higher but domain investors are not buying like they used to so the bulk of sales and sale prices are down.

    That’s what I see here from my broker’s desk.

    I will say that I am a fan of .tv and the highest price domain I ever sold since starting in 1998 was a .tv (sorry can’t disclose).

    The .tv extension has earned a place in the domain world… a smaller place than I would like but it is a valid legit extension.

  23. Very good question.

    If they were .co domains, I do think they would have sold for more but the difference would be, in my opinion, that .co domains would decline in value while the .tv domains would be steady in value.

    With that said, I don’t see much value in most two letter domains… not too many two letter words so most are short for something which means they are brandable and useless for SEO.

  24. @ Rob

    What would cause the decline in market value? IMO, .TV is known by non-domain investors, and .CO is becoming known by non-domain investors – especially startups, which should increase value not decrease it.

  25. True .TV domains are harder to resell than .COM and a .TV domain will sell for far less than the comparable keyword .COM. However, of my top three all-time domain sales, only one was a .COM and net of commissions the .TV domain was the highest sale…

  26. Elliot,

    My opinion on your question about .co vs. tv is that .co is still in the “gambling” stage so they would do better.

    .TV has been around for a while and all of the enthusiam has run its course hence any new extension – .co, .xxx, .anything – would have greater success with 2 letter names since the majority of buyers are speculators. When the speculation is higher so are the prices.

    Can anybody provide a single example of any extension outside of .com, .net or .org where prices have consistently maintained or risen in value?

    No.

    Yes, there was a correction in prices for even the top 3 extensions over the past couple years but the main reason for this is around a dozen or so guys stopped playing “who has the bigger wallet” game at auctions.

    Everybody has their own definition of success but when the .com. .net and .org market are not 100% fully capitalized and many oppurtunities exist why even bother wasting your money on anything else?

    People who own these alternative extensions will defend the names but they still dream about owning a .com

  27. The dot com will remain king now that Google is starting television on the net the dot com will be the choice domain to own dot tv is basically worthless as the recent auction has shown.If you have a good quality television domain like *****channel.com *****network.com than i think they will become very valuable very soon, the others will be the country code channel /network domains. Most people that were asked about these new extensions say they just add to the confusion of search and are not really needed ,these new extensions will never compete with .com

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