Chip $7 million into .Club as it wins private TLD auction — 27 investors
.Club applicant eliminates competition and raises $7 million to launch top level domain.
.Club Domains, LLC has raised a combined $7 million from 27 individual investors and has eliminated its competition for the .club top level domain through a private auction.
The fresh top level domain applicant recently filed its SEC Form D to raise up to $7 million, and later disclosed it raised half of that amount to participate in the private auction.
Citing confidentiality agreements, .Club Domains CEO Colin Campbell declined to provide the final auction price to Reglike.
“We’ve raised $7 million to acquire the rights to the name and to launch the name,” he stated.
Given the previous $3.5 million notice and the language used in the firm’s press release regarding the auction, I suspect the auction price was no more than $3.5 million.
Campbell stated the auction lasted four days.
As of right now the firm has three or four employees, but it is ready to expand. Campbell stated it might take 15-20 people to execute on the vision for .club.
“You could obviously run a registry for a lot less, but we like to do things in a big way”, he stated.
He also envisions multiple offices around the world. Campbell stated “club” is a worldwide brand; a term used in almost all countries to mean a similar thing.
Despite an application priority number of 1,046, Campbell is optimistic that .club will launch by early 2014 since it lacks GAC advice and is no longer faces competition.
“I can’t say how happy and excited the staff here are [regarding winning the auction]” he stated.
