Online bookmaker Pinnacle Sports has gained control of the Pinnacle.com domain.
On Friday – a very Good Friday, if you’re the Curacao-based sports betting operator – DotWeekly.com reported that Pinnacle Sports had been listed in the Whois registry as the new owner of the Pinnacle.com domain.
The domain had been owned by Avnet, a Phoenix-based Fortune 500 technology company that acquired the domain in 2011 via its $22m purchase of Pinnacle Data Systems Inc. This week saw the domain transferred from the MarkMonitor corporate brand protection service to the SafeNames registry, and while privacy protection blocked the new owners’ identity, the administrative email lists a pinnaclesports.com contact (although the domain currently still redirects to Avnet’s corporate site).
Pinnacle has long operated using its official full name Pinnaclesports.com but the new domain will undoubtedly make it easier for bettors to find what they’re looking for, particularly given the company is popularly referred to minus the ‘sports’ appendage. The domain acquisition could signal a subtle tweaking of the company’s branding strategy is in the works.
Pinnacle underwent an ownership change last year and new boss Magnus Hedman has steered the company on a regulated markets expansion strategy. The company reportedly has plans to re-enter the UK market following its late-2014 exit prior to the introduction of the UK’s new online licensing regime.
Pinnacle recently launched its first ever native app as part of its efforts to improve its mobile offering. The new in-house developed Pinnacle Lite app offers a stripped down version of Pinnacle’s sportsbook offering wagers on six sports: football (both round and oblong versions), basketball, baseball, tennis and hockey.
The app is currently only available via iOS devices for customers in Canada, Russia, Poland, Finland and the Ukraine. Pinnacle’s in-house tech team is promising the release of an Android version in due course.
