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ICANN New gTLD Auction Proceeds Approaching $30 Million
While the debate continues as to whether most new gTLDs are a sound long-term investment for their registry operators, there’s no disputing that the program has been an economic boom for ICANN. The 1,930 first round applications each required an application fee of $185,000, which added up to a tidy $357 million. Even after refunds for withdrawn applications ICANN still cleared about a third of a billion dollars from the first round before a single string was delegated.
Now, like the proverbial gift that keeps on giving, ICANN has received a total of an additional $28.5 million in proceeds from its own “last resort” auctions held prior to November. And that total, equal to about eight percent of all new gTLD application fees, came from a mere eight gTLDs! The three highest bids were Dot Tech’s $6.8 million bid for .Tech; Fegistry’s $5.6 million for .Realty; and Outer Orchard’s $5.1 million for .Salon. Meanwhile, Amazon spent a total of $6.8 million for two gTLDs, .Buy and .Spot.
And the money continues to accumulate, with Dish DBS having just plunked down $700,000 for .Dot. That was just one of five ICANN-conducted gTLD auctions scheduled for November, although the others were settled privately pre-auction. And the gTLDs currently scheduled for December are names that could each readily attract seven figure bids — .Baby, .Basketball, .Casino, .Football, .MLS, .Monster, .News, .Pet/.Pets, .School, .Security – and, notwithstanding sentiments that you can’t put a price on it, .Love.
Read more: http://www.internetcommerce.org/icann-new-gtld-auction-proceeds-approaching-30-million/
While the debate continues as to whether most new gTLDs are a sound long-term investment for their registry operators, there’s no disputing that the program has been an economic boom for ICANN. The 1,930 first round applications each required an application fee of $185,000, which added up to a tidy $357 million. Even after refunds for withdrawn applications ICANN still cleared about a third of a billion dollars from the first round before a single string was delegated.
Now, like the proverbial gift that keeps on giving, ICANN has received a total of an additional $28.5 million in proceeds from its own “last resort” auctions held prior to November. And that total, equal to about eight percent of all new gTLD application fees, came from a mere eight gTLDs! The three highest bids were Dot Tech’s $6.8 million bid for .Tech; Fegistry’s $5.6 million for .Realty; and Outer Orchard’s $5.1 million for .Salon. Meanwhile, Amazon spent a total of $6.8 million for two gTLDs, .Buy and .Spot.
And the money continues to accumulate, with Dish DBS having just plunked down $700,000 for .Dot. That was just one of five ICANN-conducted gTLD auctions scheduled for November, although the others were settled privately pre-auction. And the gTLDs currently scheduled for December are names that could each readily attract seven figure bids — .Baby, .Basketball, .Casino, .Football, .MLS, .Monster, .News, .Pet/.Pets, .School, .Security – and, notwithstanding sentiments that you can’t put a price on it, .Love.
Read more: http://www.internetcommerce.org/icann-new-gtld-auction-proceeds-approaching-30-million/
