Don't domain registars auto-renew domains for you?
The registrar will poke you, and put up warnings when you log into the server to check on your account that your auto renewal is coming up soon and the card on file has expired.
But if you're not paying attention to your domain registrations, or the renewal reminder emails get sent to the spam folder, or you've lost access to the original email address that you had to register it a decade ago, then godaddy is quite happy to put up a lander page with some inflated price on it and sell it to someone else.