7 Ways to Get a Professional Domain Name For Your Club

Choosing the right domain name for your sports team can be a challenge. The domain name determines the URL that our fans and teammates will visit, and it should be short, memorable, and easy to spell.

There are a number of things to consider when choosing a domain name, and chances are our first choice is already taken.

Online tools like domain.nr make it easy for us to find potential domain names. Let’s go ahead and point our browser to http://domai.nr and start searching.

Tip: keep an ongoing list of available domain names to review and vote on.

Start Searching

Let’s say our club is called Kensington City Football Club, and our team name is the Kangaroos. Kensington.com or Kangaroos.com would be ideal but unfortunately both of these are already registered to other people.

Some domains are for sale, but the asking price for a good domain name can be anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand, and sometimes even hundreds of thousands of dollars. So we probably need to choose an alternative.

Our first instinct is to use all of the words we can to describe our club. But in reality, this only makes the domain name longer and harder to remember, spell, and type in. Imagine having to tell everyone that our website is KensingtonCityFootballClubKangaroos.com — What a mouthful!

Here are 7 variations to help us land on the perfect domain name that is short, memorable, and easy to spell.

1. Full Club Name + .com

If our club name is short enough, the full name could be the simplest option.

Examples:

  • BurnleyFootballClub.com
  • TottenhamHotspur.com

Our version of this, KensingtonCityFootballClub.com, is available, but feels a bit long. We’ll add it to our list anyway.

2. Short Club Name + FC + .com

Let’s try replacing the last 2 words “Football Club” with the simpler “FC”. Of course, this method also works for other sports and languages by using other endings like “SC” or “SV”.

Examples:

  • ChelseaFC.com
  • EvertonFC.com
  • LiverpoolFC.com
  • StokeCityFC.com

Great news, it looks like KensingtonCityFC.com is available too and it’s much shorter than our other option.

3. Team Name + .com

Fans will often refer to us by our team name, making it the ideal domain name, but rarely available.

Examples:

  • Chargers.com (San Diego Chargers)
  • Patriots.com (New England Patriots)
  • Bengals.com (Cincinnati Bengals)

Unfortunately, Kangaroos.com is taken. Moving right along.

4. City Name + Team Name + .com

How about putting the name of the city before our team name? This is also a great option used by professional clubs.

Examples:

  • HullCityTigers.com
  • NewYorkJets.com
  • MiamiDolphins.com
  • ClevelandBrowns.com

We’re in luck — KensingtonKangaroos.com is available! Let’s add this one to our list.

5. Acronym + .com

With longer club names, it’s a good idea to use the first letter of each word to form an acronym. This makes it super easy for your teammates and fans to type in the address bar, and also looks pretty cool.

Examples:

  • LCFC.com (Leicester City Football Club)
  • MCFC.com (Manchester City Football Club)
  • SAFC.com (Sunderland Association Football Club)
  • WHUFC.com (West Ham United Football Club)

We are Kensington City Football Club so our acronym could be KCFC. Unfortunately KCFC.com has already been claimed.

6. Abbreviation + .com

We can also try shortening the name of our club or using a common abbreviation.

Example:

  • ManUtd.com (Manchester United)

A possible abbreviation for our club (Kensington City) would be KenCity. KenCity.com is taken, but we’ll keep this name in mind for the next step.

7. Replace .com with Country-Code TLD

If the .com is taken, we can always try a different ending, or Top Level Domain (TLD). Each country has a TLD, which is a great alternative often used by professional clubs in countries outside the US.

Examples:

  • QPR.co.uk (Queens Park Rangers, United Kingdom)
  • AFC.com.au (Adelaide Football Club, Australia)
  • TorinoFC.it (Torino Football Club, Italy)
  • HSV.de (Hamburger SV, Germany)

The country-code TLD for us here in Australia is .com.au. Earlier, we missed out on Kensington.com, Kangaroos.com, KCFC.com, and KenCity.com. By replacing .com with .com.au, we can add a couple more options to our list: KCFC.com.au and KenCity.com.au.

Looking at our options

By now, we should have at least a couple options for domain names. Let’s look at our list:

  • KensingtonCityFootballClub.com
  • KensingtonCityFC.com
  • KensingtonKangaroos.com
  • Kensington.com.au
  • KCFC.com.au
  • KenCity.com.au

Deciding Factors

Now that we have a list of domain name options, it’s time to make a decision. A great domain name should be:

  1. Short: A shorter domain means less work for your fans to visit your website. The length of the TLD (.com vs .co.uk vs .com.au) should also be taken into consideration.
  2. Memorable: Will people remember your domain name? Does the word order make sense? Does it contain the name of your club, or something about your team that people can instantly recall?
  3. Easy to spell: Are there words in your domain name that could be spelled incorrectly? Avoid words that have multiple spellings or repeating letters that are often misspelled.

The “Bar Exam”

Imagine meeting someone in a crowded bar and telling them what your domain name is. Will they be able to understand the name and type it in the browser when they get home?

You won’t have a chance to explain the unique spelling or how your domain uses the number 4 instead of the word “for”. And if the name is too long, they probably won’t remember it.

The “Bar Exam” covers all 3 qualities of a good domain name: short, memorable, and easy to spell.

Bonus: Creative Domain Names and New TLDs

Sometimes, it feels like every imaginable .com name is taken. Good names get registered quickly, and we might be too late to the game.

Don’t worry, this happens to the best of us. Liverpool FC’s domain name used to be LiverpoolFC.tv until they acquired LiverpoolFC.com. If we can’t afford to buy the .com name quite yet, it’s time to get creative.

A lot of new TLDs have recently been introduced, including .club and .city, which are still in the early stages but could potentially become more commonplace. Although not as widely recognized as .com, these TLDs open up new possibilities for short and unique domain names.

If we’ve run out of options or we’re feeling extra creative, here are some other domain names that we could consider: KCFC.tv, Kangaroos.io, Kensington.club, and Ken.city.

With that in mind, it’s time to gather our teammates and have a vote.

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