It was the morning after Tom Brady gave his TB12 company the best advertisement any organization could ask for — a seventh Super Bowl championship.
Common sense would suggest that legions of fans who wanted to immerse themselves in the Brady way of doing things might be flocking to the TB12 Web site. It would also seem to reason that the URL they typed in when looking for the magical elixir was TB12.com.
But that path wasn’t going to bear fruit. That would be thanks to a man named Wilfred Smith.
“Normally if there was a huge increase in traffic I would get a notification,” Smith told WEEI.com Monday morning, “but I haven’t yet.”
For the Houston businessman, nothing about Brady winning the Super Bowl resonated. The day following Tampa Bay’s win was nothing more than another morning of running the company Smith co-founded, Technology By Twelve, a software consultancy.
“The only time I heard of Tom Brady before was when he was trying to get my domain name,” he noted.
Make no mistake about, Smith’s ownership of TB12.com is no small thing. That was a reality that he came to understand in 2015, when TB12 Sports, the company Brady co-founded with Alex Guerrero, was looking to offer easy access to its internet presence.
TB12sports.com was registered on March 2, 2015. Needles to say, that was not Brady and Co.’s first choice.
“I don’t keep track,” said White when asked if he noticed his Web site getting a boost in traffic from those seeking the self-help company. “I’m not a fan.
“They were unfortunately quite sneaky in trying to get the domain away from us. I was kind of disappointed by that because what I hear the guy is supposed to be a fellow Christian. I’m like, ‘A lot of what we do is to help promote the church. I’m really shocked you would go to these kind of ends to get the domain name away from us.’
“They had three or four people calling us and harassing us about it. They were saying things like it was illegal to hold the domain name because it was his right. But we had been here longer than you had been trying to find the domain name. It’s not like we’re squatters. We’re a legitimate business.”
When asked to explain exactly what kind of business Technology By Twelve was, Smith explained: “We’re a software consultancy. We try and help companies how to use software to get their job done better. We are particularly focused on Apple products although we do software for IOS, MacOS, all the Apple products. We also try very hard donate and assist the Christian community. A lot of the projects we’re working on are the Bible Study Fellowship. We do video editing for churches for free. That’s pretty much what we do.”
Smith first registered TB12.com on Oct. 10, 2002, obviously well before The TB12 Method was ever a thing. But predictably Brady’s company was going to try and secure what would seem to be a valuable piece of internet real estate. So, how did the discussions go?
“Pretty poorly,” Smith said. “They thought we would sell it for $100. We were like, ‘No. We’re running a business. I don’t think so.’”
Smith doesn’t believe Brady was ever one of those who called on behalf of TB12, reiterating, “To be honest with you, I had never even heard of Tom Brady until they were trying to get the domain.” He also said he was never approached with growing sums of money, as is sometimes the case when companies want to secure valuable domain names.
For the foreseeable future, TB12sports.com will have to do.
“Nope, but you know that’s OK because I really don’t want to sell the domain,” said Smith when asked if any additional monetary incentives were part of offers to give up the domain name. “I have a lot of stuff based that domain. Obviously our company name is Technology By Twelve, so it’s the perfect name for us and that’s why we picked it. It absolutely nothing to do with (Brady).
“I wish him good luck in whatever, but I have no intention of selling the domain name.”
(Efforts to reach TB12 Sports for comment were unsuccessful.)
