In my morning DomainTools Domain Monitor alert email I received this morning, I noticed a registrar and registrant change for the LA.com domain name. LA.com had been registered at GoDaddy Corporate Domains (formerly Brandsite), and it transferred to GoDaddy under Whois privacy.
Using Screenshots.com – and also Archive.org, I could see the domain name resolved to a Media Options landing page with a $5 million price tag. I reached out to Andrew Rosener, CEO of Media Options, and he confirmed that his company brokered the deal. Chris Zuiker and Andrew managed the sale. Unfortunately, Andrew could not comment on the sale beyond confirming that the domain name was sold.
According to the Whois History Tool at DomainTools, LA.com had been owned by the Tribune Publishing Company. The domain name was acquired by Tribune Publishing in 2016 for a reported $1.2 million, according to DNJournal:
“In 2016’s first reported seven-figure sale, we learned that Tribune Publishing (publishers of the Los Angeles Times) bought LA.com for $1.2 million in a transaction that we confirmed was brokered by GoDaddy. When I say “reported sale” it wasn’t a case of the company announcing the purchase, it was a case of George Kirikos uncovering the sale while going through an SEC filing (see page 14) – the same way he has dug up many other blockbuster sales that would have likely gone unnoticed otherwise.”
I looked through Archive.org, and I can’t see much usage of LA.com following the acquisition beyond a coming soon page.
It will be interesting to see how LA.com is used and if we learn any more about the sale price in the same way we learned about the $1.2 million sale price.
