A few weeks ago I met Shaun Wilkinson, the Director of English Speaking Markets for Nidoma.com, for the first time at the 2017 Domaining Europe conference in Berlin. Nidoma, who is based in Cologne, Germany, provides domain registration, drop catching and brokerage services. The company has been especially strong in Italy, no doubt helped by CEO &

Co-Founder Simone Ferracuti's intimate knowledge of the market (Simone is a native Italian). 

At the show, Shaun told me that last year Nidoma had been involved in the biggest Italian ccTLD (.it) domain sale ever reported and he hoped to get clearance to share the details with me. Those details came in a Skype call from Shaun today when he revealed that Nidoma had purchased Casino.it from a client themselves, paying €400,000 ($452,000 at today's exchange rate). That makes it the first six-figure .it sale ever reported to us and obliterates the previous high water mark - also set by Nidoma in April 2014 when they sold Like.it for €55,000 ($75,900 at the exchange rate then in effect).

Image from Bigstock

Nidoma.com CEO & Co-Founder Simone Ferracuti (above left) and Director of English Speaking Markets Shaun Wilkinson worked together to complete a €400,000 deal for Casino.it.

While Nidoma routinely sells domains for others they almost never buy domains themselves. Wilkinson said an exception was made in this case because it was part of a specifically structured deal to move the domain on to a new owner. That occurred later in 2016 when Nidoma completed a sale to the current owner for an undisclosed sum.

Both Ferracuti (who spent five years with Sedo as their Country Manager for Italy) and Wilkinson (also a Sedo alumnus) expect high dollar Italian sales to become more commonplace as time goes on. Wilkinson said, "The Italian domain market is underdeveloped but has a lot of potential, so we were extremely pleased to complete a sale that was many times higher than the previous largest recorded sale for a .it. We hope to see the market develop to the stage where six figure sales are no longer so uncommon.’