Please be aware that from 1st July 2010 the team who founded BluesWeb.co.uk in 2002 relaunched under a new name at www.blues-online.co.uk after parting with the footymad network after 7 years.
We were left with no choice but to relaunch under a new name following the decision of Footymad's owners, Digital Sports Group, to not release the BluesWeb.co.uk domain name to ourselves despite the fact we founded the site before we joined the Footymad network and at no point did we agree to pass the rights on to DSG.
We established at this time that DSG changed the ownership of the domain name to themselves without our authorisation or prior agreement. From 1st July, until 1st September, Digital Sports Group have been operating the BluesWeb.co.uk domain name with no input from the original editorial team who founded the site in April 2002.
Despite our best efforts to resolve the dispute over the ownership of the BluesWeb.co.uk with Digital Sports Group without the involvement of any third parties, over the course of July it became clear that unfortunately no agreement seemed to be forthcoming with little response from DSG in our efforts to contact them or escalate the matter so it was decided to involve third parties in order to attempt to speed up the process.
On 5th August due to the lack of progress via the direct route through DSG in retrieving the domain name we commenced discussions with Nominet who manager the .co.uk domain registry system. over what we believed to be an unauthorised ownership change of Bluesweb.co.uk to DSG from ourselves. The discussions continued until 11th August when Nominet then launched an investigation.
As of 24th Aug we were informed that following the completion of the investigation, Nominet decided that the domain ownership was indeed transfered against the regulations for .uk domain names and the domain would be reverted back to our ownership on 31st August 2010. This is why you are seeing this page to inform you of the changes that have happened.
We appreciate you may have some questions on the above matter, so we have outlined a FAQ for all visitors below.
Why did we leave Footymad? The team behind our website had concerns about the direction that Footymad was heading over the course of early to mid 2010, following the change of ownership of the network late last year, where the parent company, Entertainment and Sports Agency sold the content side of their business to Opta Sportsdata and the Footymad side of the business to Digital Sports Group.
Our primary concerns with the over-reliance on advertising on the sites at the expense of content and generally the lack of investment and improvements seen in the network that we would have expected under previous ownership. This view was shared by many editors on the network and not just our own.
Why was there no notice? In late June we informed our named contact in Footymad of our desire to leave the network after previously discussing our future with footymad in some detail. We were then informed the same day, that we would not be allowed to keep the domain BluesWeb.co.uk as DSG considered it their property although we never transferred the ownership of the domain at any point.
On 1st July 2010 we received an email from our named contact in Footymad confirming he had been asked to terminate our access to the Footymad administration system and would be looking for a new editor for BluesWeb.co.uk. DSG later also refused to put up a article detailing the split and banned users who posted the new URL on the message board explaining what had happened.
Who now owns the BluesWeb.co.uk domain name? Blues-Online now own the bluesweb.co.uk domain. When transferring a domain to a new owner, consent must be given from the original owner to transfer this into a new name.
DSG carried out the transfer in November 2009 without our consent, hence the reverting to ourselves today following an investigation by nominet who were satisfied that this was the case.
I notice the Footymad Ipswich Website still calls itself Bluesweb.co.uk? We have informed Footymad, and parent company Digital Sports Group that we require them to take down all mentions of bluesweb.co.uk from their websites in the next few days to avoid any possible confusion.
What about ipswichtown-mad.co.uk? The ipswichtown-mad.co.uk domain, and any other -mad.co.uk domain used for the site is, and has always been the property of Footymad and so will remain with their company. It is likely that Footymad will carry on running a Ipswich Town site under this brand.
Is this the end of the matter? We believe that the continued use of the Bluesweb.co.uk domain by Digital Sports Group post 1st July 2010 caused substantial confusion to website users. This was not helped by the reluctance of DSG to publish a clear statement detailing the split between both the parties. To the average website visitor the site would seem like a normal day on the site.
We are mindful that the loss of domain name for such period of time and having to set up on a new site has resulted in loss of traffic users and reputation built up since founding bluesweb.co.uk in May 2002. Therefore we are currently considering further options relating to any possible action that may be taken in this regard.
What will happen with Bluesweb.co.uk now? This message will remain up for a period of 14 days, following which the domain will revert to redirecting to Blues-Online.co.uk.
I would like more information, who can I contact? Simply email us at editor@blues-online.co.uk and we will get back to you as soon as possible. Please be aware however due to any possible third party involvement in this issue there are some topics we cannot comment on at present.
