Having already shelled out £25m to secure the services of David Beckham from Manchester United, Real Madrid could be forced into another expensive tussle for the websites relating to their newest signing.
The Spanish club readily admitted that Beckham's global marketing pull was one of the reasons it shelled out the huge fee for the England captain.
But within minutes of last week's announcement that the player would wear the 23 shirt, online speculators went into overdrive to register all websites connected to the player and the number.
The much-anticipated unveiling came last Wednesday, when Beckham was officially paraded in a Real Madrid shirt in front of hundreds of the world's media.
New research shows that within minutes of the announcement, an individual based in the UK had registered Beckham23.com, Becks23.com and Becks23.co.uk.
Over the past two months alone, as rumours of Beckham's imminent departure started to pick up steam, 75 different domain names based on derivatives of Beckham have been registered, including BeckhamatRealMadrid.com and BecksinSpain.com.
Real Madrid executives hope that Beckham's appeal in the Far East will help them extend their brand into new territories, but internet experts believe they may have missed a trick in failing to register the player on the web.
"David Beckham is an extremely powerful and valuable brand, as widely acknowledged in the decision of Real Madrid to purchase the player," said Jonathan Robinson, director of business development at domain name specialist NetNames.
"Therefore, it appears very surprising that neither Beckham's agents nor Real Madrid have done anything to secure these memorable addresses and protect his brand in the online world.
"Domain names are the gateway to the internet, and sites built around Beckham23.com, for example, could now be used to sell unauthorised or fake merchandise," he added.
Real Madrid and SFX, Beckham's agents, could face a long and costly battle to recover the domain names in what remains a legal grey area.
Any complaints over copyright infringement in domain names are referred to the UN World Intellectual Property Organisation, which adjudicates on whether they should be surrendered. However, its judgements have been notoriously haphazard.
In 2001 it ordered an Oasis fan in Southampton to give up the rights to RobbieWilliams.info after he pointed the domain at the official site of the singer's Mancunian arch-rivals. But it has also ruled against celebrities such as Madonna and has said that it takes each case on its individual merits.
In the early days of the internet gold rush some opportunists made a fortune simply by buying up the domain names to popular companies and then only selling up for six-figure sums. The prices for domain names such as Business.com soared to over £5m at the height of the dotcom boom.
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