Entertainment’s Loss Is the Retail Industry’s Gain: eBay, Amazon, and iTunes Profit from Deaths of Michael, Farrah and Ed with Multi-Million Dollar Merchandise Sales
Monday June 29, 2009
The three big losses in the entertainment industry last week have turned into huge gains for the retail industry as fans find room in their recessionary budgets to snatch up memorabilia by the millions. Amazon, eBay, and Apple's iTunes are among the U.S. retailers that are winning big with Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, and Ed McMahon merchandise sales, and they seem quite unapologetic about profiting from the deaths of three big entertainment icons.
Although the numbers are changing by the minute, Amazon has confirmed that the sale of Michael Jackson and Jackson 5 CDs and MP3s increased 322 times in the 24 hours after the legendary performer’s shocking death last Thursday. By the end of Friday, 14 of the top 15 iTunes downloads were Jackson songs. Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon were sold out of all Jackson-related merchandise very quickly, and are now taking orders that they hope the music industry and publishing industry will help them fill in the near future.
The big retail industry winner in the short-run is the selling agent of all things rare and wacky, eBay. At this writing more than 53,000 active auctions and more than 33,000 completed auctions are related to some sort of Michael Jackson or Jackson Five merchandise. There are also about 3,500 auctions with Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon merchandise as well. Just the listing fees from those auctions will pay eBay’s light bill for a while.
The $10 million auction of the KingMichaelJackson.com domain didn’t sell, but it was worth the $4.00 listing fee to give it a try. Shockingly, though, if we believe everything we see on the eBay site, the auction for MJsMemorial.com domain name was viewed by 290 people, and then the 291st person purchased it for $21 million.
Personally, I’m finding it hard to believe that this is a real sale at a real price that is really going to get paid. If Sony had put the MichaelJackson.com site on the auction block, then maybe the auction price would be justifiable. But “MJ’s Memorial” doesn’t really have the search engine clout or cache that demands a multimillion-dollar price tag. Even lunch with Warren Buffet only fetched $1.68 million on the eBay auction block. Buffet’s been around a lot longer than MJsMemorial.com.
If the domain auction transaction is legitimate, though, then some enterprising teenager in Dexter, Oregon just turned a 20,000,000% profit in 48 hours. (I’m just guessing that the seller is a teenager based on the sophistication level of the auction listing.) And if this is true, then eBay, the seller of everything and owner of nothing, will get a nifty go-between fee of $1,575,000.00.
If this top auction doesn’t finalize, though, perhaps the $19 million MemoryofMichaelJackson.com, the $10 million InMemoryOfMichaelJackson.com, or the $6.5 million MichaelTheKingOfPopJacksom.com auction bids will prove themselves to be real. If even one of these deals goes through, it may be a sign to U.S. retailing that we should all consider adding domain resales into our retail product mix.
In any case, there are tens of thousands of autographed Jackson photos, vinyl albums, CDs, posters, cards, programs, guitars, and magazines waiting for bids, buy-it-nows and best offers on eBay right now. (Michael must have spent an awful lot of his fifty years writing his name, if all of these authentic autographs are really authentic.) You’ll have to look a little harder to find the truly unique items like the autographed drum heads, the Thriller commemorative iPod Touch, the Thriller Platinum Award, and the signed movie contract.
Also, there are apparently a lot of people all over the world who have had a “Beat It” red leather (or vinyl) jacket hanging in their closet for almost 30 years which they are willing to part with for the right price. For $600 or less you can hang one of the jackets in your own closet for the next thirty years.
In the midst of this retail frenzy, the least frazzled retail CEO is probably eBay’s John Donahoe, who can now sleep a little bit easier, knowing that there will be enough money in the company’s PayPal account to cover another multimillion-dollar compensation package for him this year. It would do a lot for eBay’s image within its own community if the company would share some of this king-of-pop booty with a relevant charitable organization. There are shareholders to impress, however, and since eBay's performance has been depressed for a while, the eBay boardroom is probably more eager to boost its net profits than its brand image.
Speaking of image... more about Michael Jackson's death and the retail industry...
Although the numbers are changing by the minute, Amazon has confirmed that the sale of Michael Jackson and Jackson 5 CDs and MP3s increased 322 times in the 24 hours after the legendary performer’s shocking death last Thursday. By the end of Friday, 14 of the top 15 iTunes downloads were Jackson songs. Borders, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon were sold out of all Jackson-related merchandise very quickly, and are now taking orders that they hope the music industry and publishing industry will help them fill in the near future.
The big retail industry winner in the short-run is the selling agent of all things rare and wacky, eBay. At this writing more than 53,000 active auctions and more than 33,000 completed auctions are related to some sort of Michael Jackson or Jackson Five merchandise. There are also about 3,500 auctions with Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon merchandise as well. Just the listing fees from those auctions will pay eBay’s light bill for a while.
The $10 million auction of the KingMichaelJackson.com domain didn’t sell, but it was worth the $4.00 listing fee to give it a try. Shockingly, though, if we believe everything we see on the eBay site, the auction for MJsMemorial.com domain name was viewed by 290 people, and then the 291st person purchased it for $21 million.
Personally, I’m finding it hard to believe that this is a real sale at a real price that is really going to get paid. If Sony had put the MichaelJackson.com site on the auction block, then maybe the auction price would be justifiable. But “MJ’s Memorial” doesn’t really have the search engine clout or cache that demands a multimillion-dollar price tag. Even lunch with Warren Buffet only fetched $1.68 million on the eBay auction block. Buffet’s been around a lot longer than MJsMemorial.com.
If the domain auction transaction is legitimate, though, then some enterprising teenager in Dexter, Oregon just turned a 20,000,000% profit in 48 hours. (I’m just guessing that the seller is a teenager based on the sophistication level of the auction listing.) And if this is true, then eBay, the seller of everything and owner of nothing, will get a nifty go-between fee of $1,575,000.00.
If this top auction doesn’t finalize, though, perhaps the $19 million MemoryofMichaelJackson.com, the $10 million InMemoryOfMichaelJackson.com, or the $6.5 million MichaelTheKingOfPopJacksom.com auction bids will prove themselves to be real. If even one of these deals goes through, it may be a sign to U.S. retailing that we should all consider adding domain resales into our retail product mix.
In any case, there are tens of thousands of autographed Jackson photos, vinyl albums, CDs, posters, cards, programs, guitars, and magazines waiting for bids, buy-it-nows and best offers on eBay right now. (Michael must have spent an awful lot of his fifty years writing his name, if all of these authentic autographs are really authentic.) You’ll have to look a little harder to find the truly unique items like the autographed drum heads, the Thriller commemorative iPod Touch, the Thriller Platinum Award, and the signed movie contract.
Also, there are apparently a lot of people all over the world who have had a “Beat It” red leather (or vinyl) jacket hanging in their closet for almost 30 years which they are willing to part with for the right price. For $600 or less you can hang one of the jackets in your own closet for the next thirty years.
In the midst of this retail frenzy, the least frazzled retail CEO is probably eBay’s John Donahoe, who can now sleep a little bit easier, knowing that there will be enough money in the company’s PayPal account to cover another multimillion-dollar compensation package for him this year. It would do a lot for eBay’s image within its own community if the company would share some of this king-of-pop booty with a relevant charitable organization. There are shareholders to impress, however, and since eBay's performance has been depressed for a while, the eBay boardroom is probably more eager to boost its net profits than its brand image.
Speaking of image... more about Michael Jackson's death and the retail industry...
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