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Had posted this on www.dottvnation.tv and was pmmed to post it here.
A history lesson
.tv from soup to nuts (and trust me there are a lot of nuts)
.tv the country code for the tiny island nation of TUVALU the world's smallest country. Tuvalu is a Polynesian island nation located midway between Hawaii and Australia. Back in the mid 80's when countries were being allotted two letter codes for their identity is when Tuvalu struck gold. They were assigned .tv as their cctld. In the 80's no one had any idea that this was to be such a windfall for the tiny island nation.
In 1998, Jason Chapnik a Canadian entrepreneur who was president of Information.ca approached the Tuvalu government with an idea on how to profit from their popular country code. However Chapnik was not the only one interested in .tv. Anton Van Couvering who was the former President of Net Names had been consulting Tuvalu on how to profit from their country code. Van Couvering stepped down as a consultant in order to become a bidder for .tv through his company Net Names.
After months of negotiation in the fall of 98 Tuvalu decided to go with Chapnik. Chapnik started out with a pricing structure that would price .tv much more than traditional prices for .com/net/org but more reasonable than the current premium pricing under Verisign. They started out taking $1000 deposits for the first year with renewals at $500 a year. There was also an auction structure set up to settle domain disputes or if there was two or more entities that shared a certain name.
Chapnik made many promises and gave rather high estimates to the Tuvalu government on sales of .tv domains. When Chapnik was unable to raise the $50 million upfront payment to the Tuvalu nation he brought in a white knight to save the deal.
Enter Idealab, the California incubator came in and Tuvalu agreed to license its cctld for $1million per quarter adjustable for inflation, with a $50 million cap over 10 years. Additionally the Tuvalu nation got a 20 % interest in the company.
In August of 2000 Idealab announced the three most expensive sales in .tv history. Free.tv,China.tv and Net.tv were sold for $100,000 for the first year and an additional percent for each year following. ChinaGo.com is the registrant of China.tv and Net.tv and have maintained their registration to the present day. Free.tv is registered to a Pennsylvania man that also has kept the registration up to date.
In another marketing deal Dot Tv gave the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences the domain emmys.tv for free in exchange for them to promote the site during their telecast of the EMMYS in Sept of 2000.
During this time some individuals started to make a big leap into the .tv extension. The two largest being Thunayan K Al-Ghanim a Kuwaiti businessman who has one of the largest domain portfolios on the planet. Al-Ghanim through his Future Media Architects owns suchs gems as Sexy.tv, Mp3.tv,several 1 letter .tv domains such as s.tv,t.tv,l.tv and z.tv and many more. Another major player Igal Lichtman also know to many as Mrs Jello/exoticdomains.net/Boogie Productions, owns such gems as xxx.tv,girls.tv,n.tv,x.tv, fun.tv and many more. One benefit these early adopters received was cheap premium renewal fees. Al-Ghanim has $50 renewals and Lichtman has $25 renewals. It was not uncommon to be able to negotiate renewal fees back in the early days especially if you were a big player in the .tv extension.
On January 7,2002 IdeaLab sold its Dot Tv International unit for $45 million to Verisign. The deal was an all cash deal and Verisign at the time stated the transaction would add less than $1million in sales for the 4th quarter of 2001. Verisign also said it would add $7 to $10 million in deferred net revenue.
Verisign took over and started doing business at www.tv where premium registrations could only take place through Verisign with a minimum two year contract. Non premium registrations were $50 at www.tv but other registrars such as Go Daddy, Idotz.net, Moniker and a whole host of others offered 1 year registrations for as little as $29.99 to as high as $59.99.
In the world of domain forums .tv was pretty much shunned, either considered to be too expensive or just commented on as .tv sucks. There was little to no information on the extension until November of 2005, Namepros.com started what was to be the first ever extension specific subforum. The forum located at www.namepros.com/dot-tv picked up steam quickly and educated a whole new domainer on the .tv extension.
In September of 2006 Verisign offered a once in a lifetime chance for the small domain investor interested in premium domains. Since Verisign took over the pricing had changed from Idealab now a LL.tv cost anywhere from $1000 to $10,000 a year. A LLL.tv a very popular genre of domain, cost $5oo and then rose to $750 a year. There was now to be a sale of all sales in the .tv extension. Verisign offered 70 % off the initial registration period and 50 % off renewal fees. An LL.tv could be regged for $300 for as many years as someone wanted to pay upfront and then $500 a year after in renewal.
In December 2006 Verisign announced it had partnered with Demand Media for a new marketing program for the .tv extension. Demand Media led by Richard Rosenblatt who successfully turned around and sold MY SPACE to News Corp is very bullish on the .tv extension. Demand Media rolled out Me.tv a set of social tools to allow anyone to set up their own "TV"channel.
Notable .tv sites include:
MLB.tv Major league baseball uses the site for the streaming of live baseball games.
TNT.tv a large cable tv station owned by Time Warner.
IFL.tv the International Fight League which inked a deal with MyNetworkTV.
Mtv.tv European Mtv a Viacom property.
HG.tv Home and Garden Network.
Exercisetv.tv An exercise show on Time Warner Cable and Comcast Cable.
CN8.tv Comcast network.
WFN.tv World Fishing Network
There have been some notable drops in using the .tv extension. Most notably the NFL which dropped NFL.tv and all 32 team names. The team names have been picked up and sold in the aftermarket at mostly reseller prices. NFL.tv was regged by the owner of Hollywood.tv and Sports.tv. It is interesting to find out why they dropped their .tv domains ? Even more interesting is will the NFL go after those who registered their licensed trademarks ?
Tom Gardner of Motley Fool fame gave his backing of the extension at a T.R.A.F.F.I.C. domainer convention where he said he thought the extension would be an extension to watch in 2007.
The extension has had more sales in 2007 than the last 3 years combined. Such names as De.tv, Surface.tv, Six.tv and AuctionNetwork.tv have all sold for over $20,000. It is also known that the domain ME.tv sold with a non disclosure so no details on price, but with Demand Media being the buyer we suspect it was high xx,xxx to low xxx,xxx.
Highest reported sales in the secondary market are Travel.tv for $65,000 and Mail.tv for $35,000 both purchased by Thunayan K AL-Ghanim from the same seller.
Video on the net continues to grow and with popular registrars like Go Daddy getting behind the extension with their recent .tv sale things are looking up for the extension that in 2004 everyone thought sucked.
A history lesson
.tv from soup to nuts (and trust me there are a lot of nuts)
.tv the country code for the tiny island nation of TUVALU the world's smallest country. Tuvalu is a Polynesian island nation located midway between Hawaii and Australia. Back in the mid 80's when countries were being allotted two letter codes for their identity is when Tuvalu struck gold. They were assigned .tv as their cctld. In the 80's no one had any idea that this was to be such a windfall for the tiny island nation.
In 1998, Jason Chapnik a Canadian entrepreneur who was president of Information.ca approached the Tuvalu government with an idea on how to profit from their popular country code. However Chapnik was not the only one interested in .tv. Anton Van Couvering who was the former President of Net Names had been consulting Tuvalu on how to profit from their country code. Van Couvering stepped down as a consultant in order to become a bidder for .tv through his company Net Names.
After months of negotiation in the fall of 98 Tuvalu decided to go with Chapnik. Chapnik started out with a pricing structure that would price .tv much more than traditional prices for .com/net/org but more reasonable than the current premium pricing under Verisign. They started out taking $1000 deposits for the first year with renewals at $500 a year. There was also an auction structure set up to settle domain disputes or if there was two or more entities that shared a certain name.
Chapnik made many promises and gave rather high estimates to the Tuvalu government on sales of .tv domains. When Chapnik was unable to raise the $50 million upfront payment to the Tuvalu nation he brought in a white knight to save the deal.
Enter Idealab, the California incubator came in and Tuvalu agreed to license its cctld for $1million per quarter adjustable for inflation, with a $50 million cap over 10 years. Additionally the Tuvalu nation got a 20 % interest in the company.
In August of 2000 Idealab announced the three most expensive sales in .tv history. Free.tv,China.tv and Net.tv were sold for $100,000 for the first year and an additional percent for each year following. ChinaGo.com is the registrant of China.tv and Net.tv and have maintained their registration to the present day. Free.tv is registered to a Pennsylvania man that also has kept the registration up to date.
In another marketing deal Dot Tv gave the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences the domain emmys.tv for free in exchange for them to promote the site during their telecast of the EMMYS in Sept of 2000.
During this time some individuals started to make a big leap into the .tv extension. The two largest being Thunayan K Al-Ghanim a Kuwaiti businessman who has one of the largest domain portfolios on the planet. Al-Ghanim through his Future Media Architects owns suchs gems as Sexy.tv, Mp3.tv,several 1 letter .tv domains such as s.tv,t.tv,l.tv and z.tv and many more. Another major player Igal Lichtman also know to many as Mrs Jello/exoticdomains.net/Boogie Productions, owns such gems as xxx.tv,girls.tv,n.tv,x.tv, fun.tv and many more. One benefit these early adopters received was cheap premium renewal fees. Al-Ghanim has $50 renewals and Lichtman has $25 renewals. It was not uncommon to be able to negotiate renewal fees back in the early days especially if you were a big player in the .tv extension.
On January 7,2002 IdeaLab sold its Dot Tv International unit for $45 million to Verisign. The deal was an all cash deal and Verisign at the time stated the transaction would add less than $1million in sales for the 4th quarter of 2001. Verisign also said it would add $7 to $10 million in deferred net revenue.
Verisign took over and started doing business at www.tv where premium registrations could only take place through Verisign with a minimum two year contract. Non premium registrations were $50 at www.tv but other registrars such as Go Daddy, Idotz.net, Moniker and a whole host of others offered 1 year registrations for as little as $29.99 to as high as $59.99.
In the world of domain forums .tv was pretty much shunned, either considered to be too expensive or just commented on as .tv sucks. There was little to no information on the extension until November of 2005, Namepros.com started what was to be the first ever extension specific subforum. The forum located at www.namepros.com/dot-tv picked up steam quickly and educated a whole new domainer on the .tv extension.
In September of 2006 Verisign offered a once in a lifetime chance for the small domain investor interested in premium domains. Since Verisign took over the pricing had changed from Idealab now a LL.tv cost anywhere from $1000 to $10,000 a year. A LLL.tv a very popular genre of domain, cost $5oo and then rose to $750 a year. There was now to be a sale of all sales in the .tv extension. Verisign offered 70 % off the initial registration period and 50 % off renewal fees. An LL.tv could be regged for $300 for as many years as someone wanted to pay upfront and then $500 a year after in renewal.
In December 2006 Verisign announced it had partnered with Demand Media for a new marketing program for the .tv extension. Demand Media led by Richard Rosenblatt who successfully turned around and sold MY SPACE to News Corp is very bullish on the .tv extension. Demand Media rolled out Me.tv a set of social tools to allow anyone to set up their own "TV"channel.
Notable .tv sites include:
MLB.tv Major league baseball uses the site for the streaming of live baseball games.
TNT.tv a large cable tv station owned by Time Warner.
IFL.tv the International Fight League which inked a deal with MyNetworkTV.
Mtv.tv European Mtv a Viacom property.
HG.tv Home and Garden Network.
Exercisetv.tv An exercise show on Time Warner Cable and Comcast Cable.
CN8.tv Comcast network.
WFN.tv World Fishing Network
There have been some notable drops in using the .tv extension. Most notably the NFL which dropped NFL.tv and all 32 team names. The team names have been picked up and sold in the aftermarket at mostly reseller prices. NFL.tv was regged by the owner of Hollywood.tv and Sports.tv. It is interesting to find out why they dropped their .tv domains ? Even more interesting is will the NFL go after those who registered their licensed trademarks ?
Tom Gardner of Motley Fool fame gave his backing of the extension at a T.R.A.F.F.I.C. domainer convention where he said he thought the extension would be an extension to watch in 2007.
The extension has had more sales in 2007 than the last 3 years combined. Such names as De.tv, Surface.tv, Six.tv and AuctionNetwork.tv have all sold for over $20,000. It is also known that the domain ME.tv sold with a non disclosure so no details on price, but with Demand Media being the buyer we suspect it was high xx,xxx to low xxx,xxx.
Highest reported sales in the secondary market are Travel.tv for $65,000 and Mail.tv for $35,000 both purchased by Thunayan K AL-Ghanim from the same seller.
Video on the net continues to grow and with popular registrars like Go Daddy getting behind the extension with their recent .tv sale things are looking up for the extension that in 2004 everyone thought sucked.
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