When we bring a soccer tournament on board, they most likely already have a web site that a volunteer has been managing. Mostly, the demands of the teams with online registration, communications, real-time scoring, schedules etc. has become overwhelming and the tournament is looking to replace that with a commercial product.
Everything usually goes along fine until they attempt to transfer their domain name to point to the new content. Most of the time, it is then that they find out the tournament, the club or the league does not legally own their domain. The volunteer or the web developer who set up the web site as a favor to the tournament back a few years most likely registered it under their own name. If the transfer is amicable, usually the transfer goes smoothly, but most often, it doesn’t. The volunteer is hurt because he/she is being replaced and takes the domain with them, leaving the tournament with a fight or a change to another domain.
Rightly so, the tournament believes they own the domain name and most often, they can prove the volunteer or developer was acting as an agent for them, but that is a very long fight. In the meantime, teams need to apply, etc. While it is always best to pursue securing intellectual property (IP) that you have developed, in many cases, it just is not pragmatic to delay your tournament until you can.
Our Advice: ALWAYS register all domains as property of the club, league or tournament, whatever your legal entity. The registrar, passwords and accounts that pay for the domain should be kept as part of the official record of the entity. And, while you are making sure your domain name is secure, also make sure the data that resides on the Web server, the account that serves the site and the source files on the volunteer’s/developer’s computer are also yours.
It may cost you money to secure your IP, but is sure beats free when you can longer use your data, domain or Web site.