Donuts details second private gTLD auction list

Donuts has committed 68 of its new gTLD applications to a set of private auctions due to commence August 13.
It’s the second round of auctions conducted by Innovative Auctions, which last month settled six contention sets for an average of $1.5 million per TLD.
Here’s the full list of Donuts’ strings:

.apartments .hot .art .jewelry .auction .law .audio .lawyer .baseball .legal .beauty .life .blog .living .boats .loans .broadway .memorial .broker .online .cafe .phone .casa .pizza .chat .place .church .plus .city .property .construction .rent .data .run .deals .salon .direct .school .discount .search .dog .show .expert .site .fish .soccer .football .storage .forum .store .furniture .studio .fyi .style .garden .team .global .theater .gratis .trading .group .website .guide .wedding .help .world .hosting .yoga

It’s very similar to the list of 63 strings that Donuts committed to the first round of auctions, which was under-subscribed by its rivals.
The additions since then are: .broker, .casa, .data, .deals, .dog,. expert, .lawyer, .life, .loans, .place, .property, .rent, studio, .website, .world and .yoga.
This list does not include the six gTLDs that were settled in the first round, for obvious reasons, but the following strings have also been removed: .forsale, .juegos, .marketing, .media, .sale.
Some of those appear to have been removed because Donuts has already won the contention set due to withdrawals.
The list still includes many in which Donuts is in a contention set with Uniregistry, which has previously said it would not participate in private auctions due to legal concerns.
Innovative said recently that over 100 applications had been committed to the August 13 auction.
It had previously said that the over 40 strings being applied for by applicants that had participated in the first auction had also been committed.
The deadline for committing to the auction is August 5.

Six private new gTLD auctions raise $9m

We now know (roughly) how much a new gTLD is worth.
The new gTLD contention sets for .club, .college, .luxury, .photography, .red, and .vote have been settled in a series of auctions this week that raised over $9 million.
That’s an average price of $1.5 million per string.
Writing on CircleID, Innovative Auctions project director Sheel Mohnot confirmed that the withdrawal of Donuts’ application for .vote was a result of losing the auction.
We also already know that .CLUB Domains won its auction.
But Mohnot did not reveal the winners of the other four auctions, each of which was a two-way fight between Donuts and one rival. ICANN’s web site does not yet reflect any other withdrawals.
His article does, however, quote Top Level Design and Luxury Holdings, which applied for .photography and .luxury respectively, as saying they were happy with the outcome.
Assuming they won too (which is of course not certain) that would mean Donuts lost at least four of the six auctions.
Donuts had originally submitted 63 strings to auction, but they could of course only go ahead if all of its competitors agreed to participate.
One wonders if the company submitted its lowest-value strings first in order to build up its war chest for future auctions. A good chunk of the $9 million raised will have flowed straight into its coffers.

Private gTLD auctions really will be private

The first new gTLD auctions to be held by Innovative Auctions is set to take place on Monday, but we won’t know which applicants took part until after the fact.
Innovative, which is managing the auction process designed by Cramton Associates, told DI it might announce the participants next week, after the auctions are over.
Failing that, we’ll have to infer the winners from which applications are subsequently formally withdrawn from contention with ICANN.
The only companies to publicly announce their participation so far are Donuts and Demand Media — which as partners are obviously not in any contention sets with each other — and .Club Domains.
Donuts has previously announced that it would submit 63 applications to auction, but 17 of those probably won’t go ahead because Uniregistry, which doesn’t like the private auction idea, has declined to take part.
Demand Media’s applicant, United TLD Holdco has committed its bids for .fishing, .green, .mom, .rip and .wow to the auction. Unless Uniregistry has changed its mind, the .mom one won’t be happening.
It also seems unlikely many winning bids will be disclosed.
Under the terms designed by Cramton, if only one applicant in an auction decides it wants to keep the outcome private, the other applicants will be contractually bound to keep schtum.
Private auctions will see money flow to losing applicants, some of which will also face ICANN-managed auctions at a later date. They may not want to reveal their wedge by having their pay-off public knowledge.

Donuts puts 63 new gTLDs to private auction, but at least 17 are dead on arrival

Donuts has committed 63 of its 307 new gTLD applications to a private auction next month, but at least 17 of them are doomed already because rival Uniregistry won’t take part.
Donuts, which does not want to enter into joint ventures with competing gTLD applicants, has decided to use a private auction managed by Cramton Associates instead of an ICANN auction.
The first round of auctions are due to kick off June 3, but Cramton has set a deadline of next week for applicants to commit the strings they want to bid on.
Donuts has put forward these ones (note that they’re different to those reported elsewhere earlier due to a couple of typos in the original press release):

.apartments, .auction, .audio, .baseball, .boats, .cafe, .church, .college, .construction, .direct, .discount, .fish, .football, .forsale, .furniture, .fyi, .global, .gratis, .guide, .juegos, .jewelry, .legal, .living, .luxury, .phone, .photography, .plus, .red, .run, .storage, .theater, .trading, .vote, .beauty, .broadway, .city, .club, .forum, .garden, .help, .hosting, .hot, .marketing, .media, .memorial, .wedding, .chat, .online, .pizza, .sale, .salon, .school, .search, .show, .soccer, .team, .group, .site, .style, .law, .store, .blog, and .art.

Running the list through the DI PRO database, we quickly discover that 33 of these strings are in two-horse races, 13 have three applicants, nine have four and three have five.
The remaining four contention sets have six, seven, nine and 10 applicants respectively.
Uniregistry, the portfolio applicant run by domainer Frank Schilling, is involved in 17 of the contention sets, and Schilling confirmed to DI today that the company does not intend to participate.
As we’ve previously reported, Uniregistry says it has concerns that private auctions may be illegal under US antitrust law, though substantial doubt has been cast over that assertion since.
Because all applicants in a contention set need to commit for the auction to be meaningful, we can assume that at least 17 of Donuts’ proposed auctions will not go ahead, unless Uniregistry changes its mind.
Top Level Domain Holdings has applied for 13 of the strings Donuts wants to take to auction. TLDH has also expressed concern in the past about the private auction concept.
Directi, Famous Four Media and Google are each involved in eight of the contention sets, while Amazon is involved in five.
According to Cramton, each auction will take place in bidding rounds, with the first round having a maximum bid of $50,000 multiplied by the number of applicants and subsequent rounds increasing that by 10% multiplied by the number of bidders.
If any applicant in a given auction requests privacy, then the winning amount will not be disclosed.