Know your rhubarb triangle from your Rudston Monolith? Enjoy giving detailed explanations about the difference between a riding and a county? Have strong opinions on levelling up?
You could be in with the chance of securing a web presence to match your regional pride as the domain name Yorkshire.com goes up for auction, following the collapse of the Yorkshire tourist board.
The Welcome to Yorkshire tourism body was placed into administration three weeks ago, after a £1.4m funding gap opened up when the pandemic crushed business rates in the area.
Half the staff were made redundant, with the chairman, Sir Peter Box, describing “increasingly challenging” financial circumstances. The administrators are now seeking to sell the body as a going concern.
Some of the assets may be auctioned off individually, however – including more than 150 domain names owned by the board.
“We are seeing significant interest in the business as a going concern from the travel and tourism sector as we’d expect, in addition to multiple enquiries from publishing outlets,” said the BPI Asset Advisory director, Andrew Cromack, who is an RICS valuer and will oversee the online auction.
“A domain such as www.yorkshire.com coming to market will always cause a stir due to its rarity. From existing Yorkshire businesses or those expanding into the region, brands looking for campaign domains or simply proud Yorkshire bidders, we expect high levels of interest.”
Those proud Yorkshire bidders could secure madebyyorkshire.com, perhaps to get an email address like “jim.is@madebyyorkshire.com”, for an opening bid of just £100, or the rather more specific “visityorkshirecoast.com” for a bid of £250.
Also available are Yorkshire.email (£250), Yorkshire.life (£500), and a whole load of puns (such as talkshire.com, walkshire.com and forkshire.co.uk).
As for the crown jewels: Yorkshire.com is available for an opening bid of £20,000.
