Is it just me, or does it seem like 2022 just flew right by? Here we are into the New Year and I feel like right now is the perfect time to look back on some of the best domain sales (and other data) from last year. NameBio reported a total of 150,333 domain sales in 2022, down just slightly from a total of 151,023 reported in 2021. A slightly worse year in 2022 compared to 2021 does make some sense if we were to correlate the domain market with one of the United States stock markets. For instance, the S&P 500 closed 2021 at a price of 4,766.18 (UP 26.89% on the year), but closed 2022 at just 3,839.50 (DOWN 19.44% on the year). Considering the domain market is global and the S&P 500 is limited to companies based only in the United States, that could explain why domain sales percentages weren’t nearly as bad as those of the S&P 500. Overall, I do personally believe the US economy performing poorly last year did have some impact on domain sales as a whole. However, seeing that the total number of reported sales were still very close to those in 2021 I think that should still give investors some confidence going into the new year. If the US could get interest rates and inflation under control then it could boost the markets, which could make 2023 a better year for domain sales than each of the previous two. But for now, let’s dive deeper into some of the sales data from last year!
Biggest Domain Sales of 2022
There were nine domains that sold for more than one million dollars last year. Of those nine, two sales were eight figures. That number is down from seventeen domain sales of one million or more the previous year. Here are the top 10 reported domain sales of 2022, according to NameBio.
1. nfts.com – $15,000,000
2. connect.com – $10,000,000
3. it.com – $3,800,000
4. call.com – $1,600,000
5. chill.com – $1,600,000
6. gems.com – $1,500,000
7. unlock.com – $1,228,200
8. ballet.com – $1,160,235
9. stable.com – $1,008,925
10. biontech.com – $950,000
Domain Sales Data By Extension
As you might expect, .COM lead the sales charts last year just like it does ever year. The worlds most popular extension saw 124,794 total sales in 2022 which was down slightly from the 128,622 sales reported the year before. As for the .NET extension, it saw a total of 3,714 domain sales reported in 2022 which was also down slightly from the 3,377 which were reported the year before.
But, not every extension ended the year with fewer sales. The .INFO extension reported a total of 441 sales in 2022 which was up from the 400 total sales reported the year before. The .ORG extension reported a total of 7,554 domain sales which was also up from the 6,627 total sales reported the year before. Other extensions which have been gaining popularity over the past several years also reported higher numbers. The .IO extension had 2,709 total sales reported in 2022 which was up slightly from the 2,242 which were reported the year before and the .XYZ extension had 1,607 total sales reported in 2022 which is up significantly from the 579 total sales which were reported the year before. Listed below are the results of five other extensions.
1. .CO had 956 sales in 2022 and 1,515 in 2021.
2. .DE had 634 sales in 2022 and 709 in 2021.
3. .IN had 90 sales in 2022 and 124 in 2021.
4. .CO.UK had 142 sales in 2022 and 107 in 2021.
5. .CC had 327 sales in 2022 and 261 in 2021.
ccTLD Domain Sales Data From 2022
Some country code extensions performed better than others when comparing data from last year and the year before. You can definitely see that when looking over the five ccTLD extensions I just listed above. But, aside from just looking at the number of sales reported, we can also get some great data by looking at the top sales themselves. Listed below are some of the best performing ccTLD extensions from last year.
1. CC – Not only did the .CC extension report more than fifty additional domain sales last year (327 domain sales in 2022 versus 261 domain sales in 2021), but it also saw more domains sell for five figures. In 2021, the extension reported just one sale for $10,000 or more. In 2022, the extension reported six sales for $10,000 or more. All of the sales over both years were for numeric domains, but this is still a huge increase.
2. BE – The country code extension for Belgium reported a very similar number of domain sales over each of the previous two years (22 domain sales in 2022 versus 20 domain sales in 2021), but it saw the price in some domains trend upward. In 2021, the extension reported just one sale of $5,000 or more. In 2022, the extension reported four sales of $5,000 or more. All of the sales over both years were completed through Sedo and the domains are a mixture of LLL.be patterns and single words.
3. CN – The other ccTLD domain sales I’ve shared thus far have seen an increase in the number of domains which sold for higher prices. But, the same can’t be said for China’s .CN extension. This extension saw more domain sales reported last year than it did the year before (87 domain sales in 2022 versus 65 domain sales in 2021), but the prices weren’t nearly as good. In 2021, the extension reported five sales of $10,000 or more. In 2022, the extension reported just one sale for $10,000 or more.
4. TO – One final country code extension which had some growth over the last couple of years is the .TO extension for the island kingdom of Tonga. Not only did they report more additional domain sales last year (891 domain sales in 2022 versus 607 domain sales in 2021), but it also saw significantly more domains sell for $5,000 or more. In 2021, the extension reported nine sales of $5,000 or more. In 2022, the extension reported twenty one sales of $5,000 or more. Last year also yielded one additional domain sale of $10,000 or more (5 domain sales in 2022 versus 4 domain sales in 2021).
Biggest gTLD Domain Sales of 2022
Generic top-level domain extensions have showed some excellent growth over the previous two years. In 2021, there were a total of 2,591 new gTLD domain sales reported with only one of those domains selling for $100,000 or more. In 2022, those numbers improved to 4,725 new gTLD domain sales reported with six of those domains selling for $100,000 or more. Listed below are the top 5 gTLD domain sales for 2022.
1. bull.xyz – $199,888
2. sino.xyz – $119,911
3. wrap.xyz – $110,000
4. capital.xyz – $105,000
5. profile.xyz – $104,000
We hope you find this domain sales data useful. There is so much to look at when it comes to analyzing sales that we could probably write a book. To save time we’ve tried to sum things up above so you can see how the overall performance was for domain sales last year as compared to the year before. Some extensions did better than others, but totals overall were very similar between each of the last two years. As I previously mentioned, if the US markets perform better in 2023 then I believe we’ll see more domain sales this year than either of the previous two.
