Domain researcher George Kirikos has deduced—based on clues found in corporate financial reports—that Swiss sportswear brand On Holding acquired the domain name ON.com for approximately $16 million to $17 million. This high-value transaction was never officially disclosed by the company.
The evidence emerged from the financial statements of the publicly traded company. In its 2022 annual report, the category “patents, licenses, and other rights” showed an increase of 16.4 million Swiss francs—a figure significantly higher than the typical annual growth of around one million francs—and this category explicitly includes domain name assets. Factoring in exchange rates and the asset’s lifespan, the acquisition cost is estimated to fall within the range of 15.5 million to 16 million Swiss francs.
The timeline further corroborates the timing of the deal: the brand was still using “on-running.com” in the third quarter of 2022, but had officially switched to “ON.com” by March 2023, indicating that the acquisition took place in the fourth quarter of 2022.
On is a sportswear company with a global presence in over 90 countries, reporting sales of 3.014 billion Swiss francs in 2025. A short, generic “.com” domain serves as a brand’s primary digital storefront. This transaction highlights a broader market trend: “.com” domains consisting of short, common words are exceptionally scarce. As companies scale, they often seek to acquire their primary brand-matching domain to unify their brand identity across the web. For large multinational corporations, a precisely matched, premium domain has become a strategic intangible asset worth tens of millions of dollars.
Source:
https://freespeech.com/2026/11/08/on-com-part-two-a-new-technique-says-about-16-7-million
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