Nine Entertainment’s board is facing its most crucial choice since the merger with Fairfax seven years ago – whether to accept a $2.7 billion offer for its property marketplace portal, Domain, or let things stand.

There are some saying the sale of Domain could open the doors to either a break-up of Nine or potentially a bid for it from its Bermuda-domiciled and Wollongong-based largest shareholder – billionaire Bruce Gordon.

In some respects, it should be a simple choice for Nine’s chair Catherine West, who is less than a year into the job, and interim chief executive, Matt Stanton, who have just announced the company’s earnings have fallen 25 per cent in the latest half year.

If the current interested party, CoStar, or perhaps another suitor ponies up the right money, then Domain (as they say in auction room parlance) is “on the market”.

Nine, the publisher of this masthead, isn’t a company that can afford to pass up billions of dollars, even if it means selling one of the family jewels. Its television assets, in particular, remain challenged as Nine continues to grapple with the ongoing decline in the number of people watching linear TV.

Nine’s mandarins can make all the noise in the world about the importance of Domain to Nine media’s ecosystem and long-term growth strategy, but everything has a price, and Nine’s shareholders will put enormous pressure on its board to accept an offer for Domain, provided it is rich enough.

Domain, in which Nine has a 60 per cent stake, is a tasty corporate morsel. It is the diamond in the rough of Nine’s stable of media assets.