GameChanger Media Inc. is a New York based company that was founded in 2009 and is a mobile application and website providing scorekeeping, stats, live gamestream plays, and recap stories for amateur sports teams. It is in direct competition with iSports which was acquired by ESPN mobile in 2010.
GameChanger launched the company on the domain name GameChanger.io but today the domain used is a rare, premium domain name!
GameChanger received several rounds of funding, starting in January 2009 with a seed round of $250K. Followed in April 2009 with a venture round of $195K. Funding remained calm until March 2010 when two rounds of venture money came in. One round of $200K and in April 2010, the biggest round yet of $588.1K. Series A rounds started in Jan 2011 and started with $1.6 Million and another $1 Million in November 2011. Not that $3.8 Million isn’t a lot and some of that could have been spent on a domain name upgrade, but it wasn’t.
THEN comes series B funding in March 2014 and that brings in $6.8 Million! (Funding rounds source, CrunchBase)
Let the domain name shopping begin!!!
Well, according to whois records that is. I reached out to GameChanger Media’s CTO Kiril Savino to hear the domain name stories of the company since launching on GameChanger.io to the present domains used but Kiril never replied to my request, so I will have to use whois history records and further research to take us down the path but it’s worth it.
GameChanger.com has to be domain #1 on the list to buy right? It’s an exact match domain to the companies name and app and would replace the uncommon .io extension! Well…
The $6.8 Million didn’t sit in the bank long and domain name purchase number one takes place on April 12, 2014, one month from the series B funding and Kiril Savino shows up in whois on GC.com! Whoa, I didn’t see that one coming. With only 676 2 letter .com domain names, they not only picked an expensive category of domains to shop in, but very rare ones! Facebook.com paid a reported $8.5 Million for FB.com. The wholesale minimum floor price right now on LL .com’s is about $500K based on my research. The better the letter combination (basically the more companies that use the two letter combination) the higher the price. Yes I flashed the high $8.5 Million from a Billion dollar company, but my point is, GC.com was very likely purchased for at least $500K and likely higher.. with a pretty strong potential it was seven figures! MM.com sold for $1.2 Million in June 2014 as well. MI.com $3.6 Million in April 2014. IG.com $4.7 million in September 2013. JD.com for an estimated (out of a SEC filing) $5 Million in 2011. Those are a couple other 2 letter .com domain sales that were “reported” more recently since most go unreported but backs up my estimate.
A 2011 whois history record on GC.com shows a “iNoggin” of Chicago Illinois as the owners of GC.com. The same address was shown in earlier whois records for “Chicagoway”. There is potential that GC.com sold around 1/5/2012 as the domain came out of whois privacy for 1 record (showing iNoggin) and going back into privacy and the domain transferred from GoDaddy to eNom but DNS never changed. It appears that GlobalWare Corporation owned the domain for a long time and potentially could have been the sellers but there is potential the domain sold in 2012 to somebody other than stated here.
How much GameChanger Media Inc. paid for GC.com is anybodies guess really but it did surprise me they purchased GC.com first!
Fast forward almost exactly 2 months after acquiring GC.com and another domain name purchase takes place by GameChanger Media and this time it’s the exact match domain, GameChanger.com which according to whois records was purchased on June 5, 2014 when Kiril Savino appears in whois records. The domain name was owned by another sports related company called Sports Technologies LLC out of Collinsville, CT. They have owned GameChangers.com since 10/1/2008 according to whois records until the sale to GameChanger Media Inc. happened.
I asked the seller of GameChanger.com several question and was replied to with: “All I’ll say is that they are good guys, I like their product and the purchase price for the domain was very fair.”
GameChanger Media Inc. is using the 2 letter .com domain name GC.com as its “main domain” for its website and is redirecting GameChanger.com to GC.com. The GameChanger app gets a 4+ rating on iTunes and is $39.99 for 1 year membership but is completely free for coaches, scorekeepers and team admins as a freemium model.
“On May 31, 2012, the 1 millionth game was scored on GameChanger. Given that fewer than 1 million games have been played in the history of the “Big Four” professional sports combined, GameChanger has a claim to having collected the largest collection of sports data in the world.” according to Wikipedia.org
The above, clearly showing that a lot of people were using the app and they likely have pretty good revenue, likely sparked the $6.8 Million in series B funding in 2014 and resulted in the domain shopping spree that the company acquired two very professional and matching domain names for the company. GC.com is a great domain name, as is GameChanger.com both now owned by GameChanger Media Inc. which started off on an that may have went unreported sold otherwise. 2 letter domains continue to rapidly gain value, so even if they paid $1 Million for the domain, it wasn’t a bad investment either as it can be resold down the road if they want or need to.
To note, I did reach out to ALL parties involved, and did not hear back from any of the sellers of GC.com or GameChanger.
Just wanted to follow up on that. I was in negotations with GC.com for years and the eventual price was $300k (after some bumps). That was at a time when 300k needed some serious consideration and even seemed too pricey for a LL.com. Sure enough before I could convince myself to pay that sum, GameChanger stepped in. So my guess is they got it for right about the 300k mark. Smart investment.
Thanks for the info Andy. Were you dealing with the “iNoggin” gmail address? I assume since you said that GameChanger stepped in, that you were dealing with the past owners in early 2014 yet?
Great investigative work, Jamie. Keep up your good work. One day they’ll want to answer your questions.
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