Sues NBC Universal Over Failed Women.com Deal at Sedo — DONE! Ventures
Firm sues NBC Universal for allegedly backing out of deal to sell Women.com.
Robin Wauters at TechCrunch is reporting regarding a domain deal that didn’t quite get “done”, and a lawsuit filed by the buyer.
DONE! Ventures (which participated in the Toys.com auction) is suing NBC Universal for allegedly not following through with an agreement to sell Women.com and women.net.
As stated by the complaint, NBC Universal agreed to an exclusive brokerage agreement with Sedo to sell the domain names. Domain name broker Alan Hack alerted DONE! regarding the domains, and DONE! Ventures then made an offer of $1 million for the two domain names, which was supposedly accepted. DONE! states that Sedo informed it a few days later that the deal would not go through, as NBC Universal President & CEO Jeff Zucker personally vetoed the deal.
DONE! Ventures is asking for the court to enforce the deal.
It’s very difficult to sell domain names into sizable firms since of all of the signing-off that must occur. But I know first hand that it’s even harder to buy domains from big firms. A couple years ago I had a multi-million dollar brokerage deal in the works. Both sides agreed to the deal, but then infighting ensued at the big firm that was selling the domain. The issue? Which group within the firm would get credit for the sale.
This is the second high profile case of a seller backing out at Sedo to come out in the past week.
