Three new gTLDs makes it through evaluation

Three new gTLD applications passed either Initial or Extended Evaluation this week, according to ICANN’s latest updates.
MMA IARD, a French insurance company, passed IE for .mma, a dot-brand. It’s an uncontested application, so it seems unlikely that “mixed martial arts” will ever have its own exact-match gTLD.
Boston Consulting Group and I-REGISTRY passed Extended Evaluation on .bcg and .online respectively.
Both had failed IE first time around for failing to provide sufficient financial statements, and both seem to have rectified the problem in EE.
I-REGISTRY’s pass means all four remaining .online applicants are through evaluation and can begin to fight out the contention set among themselves.

Second .online gTLD bid and third ‘guardian’ dot-brand withdrawn

Directi appears to be the last man standing in the three-way tie-up for .online, following the latest new gTLD withdrawals.
Namecheap has dropped its .online application, closely following Tucows, which dropped its bid a couple of weeks ago.
The three companies announced a deal in March to see them cooperate to win the contested TLD, but at the time it wasn’t clear which applicants would pull out.
Directi’s bid (filed by DotOnline Inc under the Radix brand) remains. It has already passed Initial Evaluation, which may be part of the reason its application was chosen as the “winner”.
The gTLD is still contested, however. Directi is competing with Donuts, I-Registry and Dot Online LLC.
Separately today, a curious two-way dot-brand battle seems to have had its final twist, with Guardian Life Insurance’s withdrawal of its application for .guardianlife.
The insurance company and newspaper publisher Guardian News and Media had both applied for gTLDs containing the string “guardian”. There were originally five, but only two remain.
It now looks like Guardian News will get .theguardian, having previously conceded .guardian to its brand rival and dropping its bid for .guardianmedia.
It appears that there’s been more than a bit of strategic applying, and maybe some deal-making, here.
Neither remaining application is contested, and neither have objections. It’s likely that .guardian is captured by the Governmental Advisory Committee’s advice against “closed generics”, however.

Tucows, Directi and Namecheap to combine .online gTLD bids

Three applicants for the .online gTLD appear to have settled their differences in what I believe is the first public example of new gTLD contention set consolidation.
Tucows, Directi and Namecheap said today that that they plan to “work together to manage the .online registry.” From the press release:

applicants for the same TLDs have begun to compete, negotiate, and, in some cases, join forces to ultimately produce one winning bid.
The first such alliance was revealed today, when domain industry veterans Directi, Tucows and Namecheap announced that they would work together to manage the .online registry.

The companies are of course three of the most successful domain name registrars out there.
The press release does not specify how the combination will be carried out. Under ICANN rules, two of the applicants would have to drop their applications. It’s not possible to resubmit as a joint venture.
It also does not acknowledge that there are three other applicants for .online — Donuts and smaller portfolio applicants Dot Online LLC and I-REGISTRY Ltd — which are not party to the agreement.

Directi expects all 31 of its gTLDs to be contested

Directi has applied for 31 new top-level domains and expects all 31 of them to be contested, according to CEO Bhavin Turakhia.
The company has budgeted $30 million for its unashamedly mainstream portfolio of applications – which includes the likes of .web – but that’s not including what it expects to spend at auction.
“I expect there to be contention in all of them,” he said. “Whether they will end up going to auction… we’re completely open to strategic partnerships with other industry players who we believe can add value and join hands with us, based on merit. We’ll be evaluating this on a case by case basis.”
“Something like a .web, there’ll be enough competitors out there that it will certainly go to auction, no matter what,” he said, adding that he expects at least 10 rivals for .web.
Directi has applied for: .web, .shop, .bank, .law, .music, .news, .blog, .movie, .baby, .store, .doctor, .hotel, .play, .home .site, .website, .click, .online, .one, .ping, .space, .world, .press, .chat, .city, .deals, .insurance .loans, .app, .host, and .hosting.
The company is applying via its new business unit, Radix, using ARI Registry Services as its back-end registry provider.
Turakhia said he expects to use a traditional registry-registrar model for most of the domains, assuming Directi wins its contention sets.
“The strings that we have gone for are strings that are relevant to all registrars so we expect there to be significant adoption,” he said.
“If eNom were to apply for .web and .shop – and they probably will – and if they were to win those TLDs, then our registrar businesses would definitely carry them irrespective of the fact that we have our own TLDs,” he said. “There are only so many good viable strings out there.”
Most of Directi’s gTLDs, if approved, will be completely unrestricted.
For .movie, .law, .doctor and .bank there will be some tight restrictions, Turakhia said. (UPDATE: he later added that .insurance and .loans will also be restricted).
Some will also have additional rights protection mechanisms that go above and beyond what ICANN mandates in its standard registry contracts.
But none of its applications are “community” applications, the special category of application defined by ICANN.
Turakhia said he doesn’t think some of the applicants trying to “sneak through” as community applications will be successful.
“We’re treating these as all generic strings for anyone to register domains in,” he said. “.music for me does not represent a community. I could be a bathroom singer and want a .music domain name.”
“If you treat music lovers as a community then 100% of the world is part of that community.”