NamesCon conference will be opened on upcoming Sunday in Las Vegas; it is one of the largest events in the domain business. The participants will discuss a wide variety of issues – from the development of domain system and the investments in new domains to the peculiarities of the business in China and the most controversial decisions made under UDRP policy. In the evening of the first day the annual auction of domain names will take place, it usually attracts the closest attention of the domain investors.
Some of the lots are united into batches, usually by “theme”. One of these batches will probably be the leader of the auction. It unites domains bar.com, bar.net, cafes.com, grill.com, place.com, pub.com and shelter.com. The highest pre-bid is already over 1 million dollars – 1,010,000, reports Domain Incite. Another five domains have bids in six figures - the highest is for ol.com (US$800,000).
In general the analysis of the bids shows that investors are still interested mostly in short names in .COM domain. New domains have to settle for much more modest sums. For example, the highest pre-bid for a name in gTLD is for gold.club and amounts to 1010 dollars.
