gTLD registrations have peaked. With a rocky road ahead, how long until the crash?

[pfj]

Worrying stats from nTLDstats.com - for the last two weeks, new gTLD registrations have been almost static, and are actually starting to decline. Where previously we saw 10k, 15k, 20k new registrations per day, for a sustained period now registrations have ground to a halt. In the two weeks to date we should have expected to see an increase of almost 350,000 domains, but in fact we've seen a LOSS of 7,644.

This is something that I've expected to see happen for months as the inflated figures of various registries begin to adjust - i.e. the low/no-cost "puff" registrations are dropped. .XYZ tried to combat this earlier in the year with their huge promotional event, but you can only do a bargain basement sale once or twice before people lose confidence.

I see this as a sign that the market has reached saturation. Registries have failed to communicate the real benefits of new TLDs while businesses and individuals are failing to adopt them. The number of active sites using new gTLDs seems to be tiny compared to the number of domains registered. This causes a huge problem for investors as the whole gTLD sector risks becoming contaminated.

Christa Taylor/dotTBA's analysis of the first six months of new gTLD performance on Circle ID brought to light some stark realities: a huge number of registries are operating at a loss, and if registrations continue to fall away, the writing is on the wall for many of these registries. I'm confident that we will see a number of registries cease operations in the next 6 to 12 months.

Total number of gTLD registrations:

July 12th: 22,951,202
July 24th: 22,943,558
Increase/decrease = -7,644 (0.03% decrease)

Even with only a 1.5% increase over the period (which is less than similar periods) we should have seen around 345,000 domains being added, bringing the total to around 23,295,470 so this is a startling difference.

Comparing similar periods from previous months:

June 12th: 22,071,306
June 24th: 22,531,238
Increase/decrease = +459,932 (2.28% increase)

May 12th: 17,513,791
May 24th: 18,016,647
Increase/decrease = +502,856 (2.87% increase)

April 12th: 16,726,767
April 24th: 17,030,054
Increase/decrease: +303,287 (1.81% increase)

Compare Christmas/New Year 2015/2016 (which might be expected to be a quiet period)

December 22nd: 10,987,060
January 3rd: 11,241,742
Increase/decrease = +254,682 (2.31% increase)

Same period last year:

July 12th 2015: 6,570,729
July 24th 2015: 6,676,608
Increase/decrease: +105,879 (1.61% increase)

 

[nomen]

i think the worst drops have still to happen. we are now approaching the time when we had the Chinese bubble starting last year. Expect massive drops in .com and all other extensions.

Yup, massive!

 

[garptrader]

Historically many of my domain sales went to investors generally buying in the $XXX range. New TLDs have stolen market share as investors have far more choices and oftentimes lower pricing than even cheap aftermarket domains. 20 million+ new TLD registrations are mostly investors and portfolio turn in new TLDs is no better than with .COM portfolios. However, the divergence of funds from domainers and developers who previously were buying aftermarket .COMs or .Nets, .TVs, etc who now are buying cheaper .XYZ, .TOP, .CLUB and other new TLDs will affect the renewal rates of extensions such as .COM, .NEt etc as well.

 

[bmugford]

This is the future waiting a lot of new extensions - http://www.thedomains.com/2016/08/2...cam-loses-60-of-its-registrations-in-a-month/
http://www.thedomains.com/2016/08/2...cam-loses-60-of-its-registrations-in-a-month/


Webcam has lost around 60% of its registrations in the since mid July months according to registrarStats.com and mTLDstats.com

.Webcam which is another Famous Four Media owned new gTLD domain extension, which was offered at very low pricing at Alpnames.com, had over 97,000 registration on July 15th, before its anniversary date, now has just over 34,000 registrations after losing 5,288 domain registrations yesterday.


That means .Webcam has lost 60,000 registrations in just over a month and the bleeding is still ongoing.


A couple of months ago we wrote about .Party which at the time we noted had went from a high of 250,000 domain registrations to just over 107,000.


However as we sit today .party has just over 57,000 domain registrations meaning it lost some 200,000 registrations during its anniversary or some 80% of its registrations.

 

[jmcc]

Some of these new gTLDs are having a very difficult time in attracting development and renewals. Others are doing OK. But the zonefile inflation strategy is proving to be a real problem for some of these registries. The higher priced gTLDs are generally the ones that are doing better than the inflated ones.

Regards...jmcc