The famous restaurant Ray's Boathouse in Seattle has rejected another offer to sell its Rays.com domain. The amount of the offer remained undisclosed, but it certainly was about very serious money, since Major League Baseball (MLB) acted as a potential buyer. It is one of the most popular, visited and wealthy sports leagues in the world and pays great attention to image issues, of which domain names are an important part.
To date, MLB owns almost all of the .COM domains that match the names of the teams playing in the league (these domains are the sites of teams visited by a huge number of fans). And just recently, MLB representatives achieved another success: they were able to purchase the Twins.com domain - for the site of the Minnesota Twins club. For a long time, the twins really owned the domain - entrepreneurs brothers Darland and Darwin Miller. In the past, they have turned down an offer to sell their domain for $750,000. But either their financial situation worsened, or the latest offer of MLB turned out to be even more generous, but the domain still came under the control of the baseball league.
But with the domain Rays.com MLB was not lucky, and the Tampa Bay Rays team will apparently have to do without their own domain. The Rays.com name was registered by Ray's Boathouse back in the days when "the internet was in its infancy." The restaurant itself has a 50-year history, specializes in fresh seafood dishes and managed to become something like one of the attractions of Seattle. According to restaurant director and co-owner Doug Zellers, offers to sell the domain have been coming in from MLB since 1998, but the answer remains the same. “there’s no price. The ownership group is not interested in selling that off. We’re true to who we are. We’re not going to sell out for money to change who we are or what we stand for. You can buy salmon, oysters, and pan-seared scallops, but Rays.com is not for sale,” MyNorthwest quoted Zellers.
