Tea Party Nation Founder Judson Phillips and those of his ilk better start saving up: The web domain of the Tea Partiers’ dreams, www.TeaParty.com, is being put up for sale by the Canadian rock band that’s owned it since 1993.
The self-described apolitical band, which broke up in 2005 only to reunite in July, first began receiving offers to purchase their domain name in 2010, right around the time the Tea Party movement started dominating headlines in the U.S.
Ironically, the offers spiked after Bloomberg Businessweek‘s Joshua Green reported on the group’s ownership of the website in an article on September 15.
At that time, the group’s communications director emailed TPM to quash rumors that the members were interested in selling to a political organization, writing “We’re pretty happy with our web address.”
But now, after about a month of being bombarded with requests for purchase, the group has finally decided to “sell out,” and is giving the domain name up to the highest bidder in a sale process being brokered by domain services company Sedo.
“There were a lot of brokers that were interested in handling this sale,” said Kathy Nielsen, director of sales in North America for Sedo, in a telephone interview with TPM. “They decided last Friday [October 14] to go with us.”
Nielsen said that her company would be reaching out to prospective buyers within the next two weeks to see who was seriously interested in acquiring the coveted domain name and all of its pro-Constitution connotations. However, due to Sedo’s confidentiality guarantees, Nielsen couldn’t say who exactly would be on that shortlist, nor could she provide the reverse price – the minimum amount the band is willing to sell for.
However, Nielsen told TPM that “There’s a strong chance of it being a record-setter” as far as political related domain sales go.
“I can easily imagine it joining the seven figure club,” Nielsen said. “It’s really difficult to tell where it will end up. It probably won’t beat Sex.com,” which Sedo sold for $13 million in November 2010, setting a Guinness World Record for “most expensive Internet address.”
“Thats a tough one [to beat],” Nielsen added, “It could still happen.”
Still, there’s little doubt that TeaParty.com will be the most exciting domain sale to occur in some time. The last ones that Nielsen recalls attracting even half as much attention were: KerryEdwards.com, which was due to be put to auction for $150,000 by Indiana bail bondsman Kerry Edwards only to be placed back into a private brokerage at the last minute after an initial bidder pulled out and; Joetheplumber.com, which was owned by Texas plumber Joe Francis, who received an $800,000 buyout offer after McCain’s infamous line in a 2008 Presidential debate.
“In a way it’s like antiques roadshow,” Nielsen said, of the domain sales process. “You buy this domain for cheap early on, hold onto it for years, and then don’t know what you have until you take it until you decide you want to sell it and get it appraised.”
Still, Nielsen cautioned that customers do their research before entering into the high-stakes process of domain swapping.
“We really urge people to take the time to learn about this industry,” Nieslen told TPM. “There are alot of good resources. And if they’re interested, give us a call. We guarantee confidentiality. That’s why the Tea Party wanted to work with us.”
Nielsen also said that the domain marketplace was only about to change radically thanks to the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ controversial decision to open the door to “.anything” domains in June.
Still, Nielsen said the TeaParty.com name would always be valuable for one reason: “We don’t believe it will affect the existing dot com domains…Dot com is still the best and most valuable domain name extension in the world.”
