As GoDaddy changes commission rates at Afternic, DAN, Uniregistry at what point do their actions become monopolistic?

[xynames]

As I discussed here, GoDaddy has now increased the commission rate for sales not using their landing pages at Afternic and at DAN and Uniregistry. One by one GoDaddy has acquired all three of these formerly independent marketplaces, and now, will make the commission rate 25% at all three for sales not using in-house landing pages.

While there remain alternatives, including selling domains directly through our own landing pages, do these or further attempts to buy out the available domain marketplaces constitute a creation of an effective monopoly?

Antitrust laws are regulations that encourage competition by limiting the market power of any particular firm. This often involves ensuring that mergers and acquisitions don't overly concentrate market power or form monopolies, as well as breaking up firms that have become monopolies.

This represents an at least 5% increase at Afternic for me, since I use my own landing pages, and keep in mind that for larger sales, even more of an increase, since at Afternic , you used to pay 20% of the first $5,000, 15% of the amount over $5k up to $25,000, and 10% over that.

Uniregistry used to charge 15%, for brokered sales, so this represents a 10% increase there.

DAN used to charge 9% for sales that resulted from listings within their marketplace, which represents a 16% increase there.

I'm starting to wonder whether some sort of anti-trust action might be viable against GoDaddy as it tries to take over the domain marketplace, and impose its high commission structure across the board. I don't think anyone has given any serious thought to that sort of thing yet, but I don't see the difference between buying up all the domain marketplaces, versus buying up too many casinos in one place, or too many gas stations across the country, especially since these GoDaddy actions of imposing the same (and now higher) commission across the board at too many outlets become anti-competitive. At what point will GoDaddy hold an effective monopoly in the domain sales business?

 

[equity78]

Uniregistry used to charge 15%, for brokered sales, so this represents a 10% increase there.

For Uniregistry sellers using Uniregistry nameservers, the net amount paid out for brokered sales is the same, as Uniregistry’s current commission fee is 15%.

https://www.godaddy.com/garage/godaddy-aftermarket-alignment-commission-model-update/

 

[xynames]

I never use any landing pages other than my own, so the increases are across the board to 25% for domainers like me.

 

[equity78]

I am not an anti - trust lawyer, but I do not think these moves would affect that. Other places charge 30% and people pay that. I don't know that the buys would have been that large that it would trigger monopoly violations or anti-trust.

Afternic has been owned for many, many years. Perhaps with no solid breakdown of how much of the market DAN.com or UNI controlled plays a factor here.

There is plenty of competition, BrandBucket, Sedo, Squadhelp, Namecheap, Dynadot, NameSilo etc... Many might say outside of Sedo those aftermarkets get little traffic compared to GoDaddy and that's understandable but it's still competition and those marketplaces could put more time, effort and money into expanding their marketshare. Again in my opinion.

 

[xynames]

I would agree that GoDaddy's owning Afternic, DAN and Uniregistry probably do not rise to an effective monopoly, but anti trust might become an issue if GoDaddy keeps acquiring more marketplaces.

No place I use anyway, charges 30%. I think the only ones that are so expensive are places that purport to sell "branded" domains, such as SquadHelp, which charges 30% or so, or Brandbucket or Brandpa, also around 30%. The problem with those places is that they require an exclusive right to sell. Correct?

 

[Windoms]

I am not an anti - trust lawyer, but I do not think these moves would affect that. Other places charge 30% and people pay that. I don't know that the buys would have been that large that it would trigger monopoly violations or anti-trust.

Afternic has been owned for many, many years. Perhaps with no solid breakdown of how much of the market DAN.com or UNI controlled plays a factor here.

There is plenty of competition, BrandBucket, Sedo, Squadhelp, Namecheap, Dynadot, NameSilo etc... Many might say outside of Sedo those aftermarkets get little traffic compared to GoDaddy and that's understandable but it's still competition and those marketplaces could put more time, effort and money into expanding their marketshare. Again in my opinion.

There is no possibility to gain marketshare.
GD owns afternic's network.
By shutting doors to competition (25%), they just killed everyone besides them.

The only way to bring back competition is for someone to establish a network similar to afternic.

They just took 90% marketshare, by force.
No sane person using bin will refuse to use afternic.

 

[Windoms]

I would agree that GoDaddy's owning Afternic, DAN and Uniregistry probably do not rise to an effective monopoly, but anti trust might become an issue if GoDaddy keeps acquiring more marketplaces.

No place I use anyway, charges 30%. I think the only ones that are so expensive are places that purport to sell "branded" domains, such as SquadHelp, which charges 30% or so, or Brandbucket or Brandpa, also around 30%. The problem with those places is that they require an exclusive right to sell. Correct?

All we need is Namecheap making they own syndication network and godaddy/afternic's dominance over the aftermarket is done.
Everyone's leaving.

No need to worry about them acquiring competition.
They can't acquire Namecheap.

 

[NickB]

They can't acquire Namecheap.

Why not? Just curious.......

Would that trigger a Anti Trust / Monopoly review?
Does the CEO not like Godaddy or would refuse to sell?
Would ICANN not allow it?

Something else?

 

[xynames]

I imagine that DAN's being acquired by GoDaddy or Uniregistry's being acquired by GoDaddy doesn't increase the power of their marketplace other than if increased GoDaddy advertising dollars drive traffic to their marketplace. Maybe if now the "fast transfer" network extends to DAN and Uniregistry that might make a difference though.

As far as using their landing pages, there's really no difference as far as exposure if you use your own landing pages or someone else's. If someone finds your domain and lands on it, it's not going to be because the nameservers point here or there, but because the name itself attracted someone's attention.

So all that matters is how many people are scouring the marketplaces themselves, independently, looking for domains, and as my multi year listing across all of these non-exclusive marketplaces has shown, Afternic is #1, but it is even more effectively #1 now that GD has acquired DAN and Uniregistry too. DAN and Uniregistry marketplaces may have been dead compared to Afternic, but they did have more going on than some other marketplaces.

What I'm wondering - at what point would it just be more beneficial for GoDaddy to eliminate DAN and Uniregisty (or even Afternic) and just merge them all into one giant GoDaddy marketplace? They would lose some customers, but overhead might go down, and if the marketplaces are all connected then why would it even matter that domains are listed in one place or another?

 

[equity78]

What I'm wondering - at what point would it just be more beneficial for GoDaddy to eliminate DAN and Uniregisty (or even Afternic) and just merge them all into one giant GoDaddy marketplace? They would lose some customers, but overhead might go down, and if the marketplaces are all connected then why would it even matter that domains are listed in one place or another?

I have thought that as well, when does it just become GoDaddy Aftermarket and nothing else.

 

[equity78]

Why not? Just curious.......

Would that trigger a Anti Trust / Monopoly review?
Does the CEO not like Godaddy or would refuse to sell?
Would ICANN not allow it?

Something else?

A lot of animosity over the years, I would tend to agree while you never say "Never". Namecheap would be the last registrar to sell out to GoDaddy.

https://techcrunch.com/2011/12/26/g...cusations-removes-normal-rate-limiting-block/

https://domainnamewire.com/2022/04/03/namecheap-and-godaddy-fight-about-domain-aftermarket/

 

[J.R.]

GD has a smart team that knows when to buy competitors that pose a threat to their market-share.
There is no point in GD having Dan and Afternic, but Dan was the superior option with the flexible payment options.

Once GD updates Afternic with payment plan options; there will be no purpose for Dan, it all be merged no later than end of 2024.

The leadership at Dan was smart to sell when they did.

It sucks as a domainer, but the opportunity for other registrars to step in where Dan is vacating the spot is there. Dan has provided the model and the demand is there for a similar service that keeps commissions below 10%.

In fact, this is a great opportunity for some software company to create a no-code drag and drop product for domainers to completely host their domain portfolio on private website. Could be one out there, if you have an example please share.

My plan for a long time, once I get 300 domains under ownership is to host my own portfolio landers.

 

[soidav]

A lot of animosity over the years, I would tend to agree while you never say "Never". Namecheap would be the last registrar to sell out to GoDaddy.

https://techcrunch.com/2011/12/26/g...cusations-removes-normal-rate-limiting-block/

https://domainnamewire.com/2022/04/03/namecheap-and-godaddy-fight-about-domain-aftermarket/

Only matter of a proper offer on the table

 

[tonyk2000]

at what point do their actions become monopolistic? Probably, it would be determined should/if affected entities (parking companies who are losing business thanks to GD, providers like efty or brandbucket, etc, etc) unite forces and start submitting complaints to appropriate authorities both in U.S. and EU (where DAN is still located). It is worth mentioning that a lot of domains were parked with forsale links, and, if they are all now switching away from parked pages to gd-owned properties, the largest victim of this would be Google... Since Google pays a small fraction of advertising bid to parking companies, and it is shared between parking company and the domainer. So, G lost (ot will lose) probably more parking $$$ than all domainers and parking companies combined, thanks to recent GD actions.