.tickets weirdness

[Cam K]

Hey everyone.

Sorry if this post is ignorant as I've been newly introduced to GTLDs and have specific interest in .tickets due to my industry.

It was to my understanding that they're allowed to hold back 100 names for promotional use with the remainder being available for anyone to register this week. Literally every name I've checked is registered by "Accent Media Limited" which appears to be the company behind .tickets. I talking every number between 0-9999 .tickets, every color, every word you could ever think of that would make sense with .tickets is owned by Accent Media Limited.

Also the registration fee is $500 per year with a $75 "application fee".

Is this normal? What is the point of having new TLD's if the company that releases them owns all the names?

 

[Kate]

What is the point of having new TLD's if the company that releases them owns all the names?

I have said that time and again, it defeats the whole purpose of new extensions when the registries hold back the names people would want to buy.

I checked a couple and they appear to be inactive/reserved. That might change in the future though, or they will probably auction them first.

If the registries squat on the best keywords and demand outrageous registration fees they are shooting themselves in the foot. They will struggle to sell their stuff.

 

[johname]

The Dot Tickets extension has a different business model than something like Dot XYZ . Dot Ticket not going after the domainer that's typing hacky things in the search box seeing if it's available. In fact they expressly don't want your money. Instead they are going for qualified ticket agencys. They want people to feel 100% safe when buying tickets through a dot ticket domain/site.

So less number of domains sold but higher money per domain.

 

[Cam K]

This quote from their site seems to disprove your theory that they're holding names for ticket agencies, rather that they're looking for top dollar or a rev share on every good name.

"We have currently reserved many thousands of premium generic names. These range from Category Killer premium names like airlinetickets, to numeric names like 8888tickets, and to geographic names like newyorktickets. If you would like to discuss any premium generic name with us, we would be happy to negotiate a price. We are open to discuss deals that include an up-front payment together with either a revenue share or retained equity participation, or of course a simple cash payment.

We will be releasing some bundles of premium names in late 2015 / early 2016, although this will not include our most valuable Category Killer reserved names which will only be available via negotiation. Please contact us through the domain enquiries form to discuss acquiring premium reserved names."

 

[johname]

Its not a theory. As I said they are going after legit ticket businesses, not domainers keyword hunting. These legit ticket business can also be start ups wanting 'killer' premiums names too.

 

[Kate]

History has taught us that industry-specific TLD don't do well, especially when they are restricted and involve red tape.
Examples: .jobs .travel .aero .museum

To begin with, the possible end users hardly know that there are TLDs "made just for them". When they learn about those TLDs, they won't understand why the registry is asking hundreds, thousands of dollars or more when they could as well spend $10 on a .com domain, or a ccTLD, and be done with it.

This business model is doomed to fail, just like it has failed in the past.

 

[Cam K]

"Instead they are going for qualified ticket agencys. They want people to feel 100% safe when buying tickets through a dot ticket domain/site."

This is BS. They're holding out all the good names to get kicked back some of the revenue of the companies using them.

The registry has reserved such names as "speeding.tickets" "parking.tickets" "airline.tickets" "movie.tickets" "lunch.tickets" and the list goes on and on. These have zero to do with live events and are in no risk of a consumer needing to "feel safe" when "buying" tickets on a website. How do you even buy a "speeding.ticket"?

This is pure cash grab plain and simple, and anyone looking to register a .tickets domain name better be prepared to cut Accent Media in on the action like Shubert company just did.

 

[johname]

As I said they don't want domainer money

 

[Cam K]

How are they able to have 15k+ names registered under Accent Media but only 523 names are showing up as reserved on ntldstats?

 

[Kate]

It's probably reserved but unresolving domains.
For example .xxx claims 200K domains but only 100K are provisioned in the zone files and resolving. The rest are reserved at registry level. Those names don't really exist. Whether they should be included in the domain count is debatable, each registrar has its own methodology for counting, depending on how rosy you want the stats to look.
It is another form of figure stuffing.