In a separate deal reported yesterday on sportbusiness.com, SCG Enterprises Ltd, the betting arm of Sports.com has been sold to ukbetting plc in a deal priced at around ã670,00($1.025m/EUR1.042m), saving 11 jobs.
Administrator Bruce Mackay said, "Commercial sensitivity prevents me from disclosing the exact sum received for the termination of the license of the sports.com domain. However I can confirm that in total we have comfortably exceeded our target of a seven-figure sum for the main domain and the betting business. This is a fantastic result for creditors who often expect to receive little or nothing from the collapse of failed dot.coms."
Separate negotiations for the content provision side of the business are still on going but a sale now looks unlikely. Mackay commented, "Sadly, this is symptomatic of the dot.com industry. Potential buyers are primarily interested in the name and customer base rather than the content of the site and the contracts that go around it. Unless your content is unique it is very difficult to persuade the buyer to purchase the whole package."