Brand Protection

Nets Loss – Part II

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November 21, 2012

By jbourne

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the domain name Nets.com redirecting to a page taunting the Brooklyn Nets and owner Mikhail Prokhorov and subsequently, the Dallas Mavericks homepage. Some people suspected that the prank was the work of Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who has feuded with Prokhorov in the past, but that theory could be dispelled by a new Nets.com development, reported by the New York Post.

Today, if you type Nets.com into your browser, you will find yourself on the NBA homepage of another New York team: the New York Knicks. This new redirect provides more questions than answers. If Cuban really were behind the page, why would he promote an NBA team that isn’t his own, or is there a third party who just likes to mess with Prokhorov and the Nets?

WHOIS data for the site has not changed since October, and it is still registered to Cyber Mesa Computer Systems in New Mexico, the company that has owned the domain name since 1994. One would guess that the same person is behind all of the different redirects, due to their generally similar nature, but it’s impossible to know for sure.

Regardless, the same takeaway as before remains true. The loser here is the Nets franchise, which is being repeatedly pranked on a domain name that it should own. Of course, now that the season has started, the real NBA action is on the court, but it will be interesting to see how this domain name drama plays out online.

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About jbourne