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Second private auction nets $1.2m per gTLD

Kevin Murphy, August 16, 2013, 09:05:37 (UTC), Domain Sales

Only eight new gTLD contention sets were resolved during Innovative Auctions second round of private auctions this week, and the average winning bid has gone down.
The eight strings sold for a combine $9,651,000, or an average of $1.2 million per string. That’s down from the $1.5 million average reported from the first round of auctions in June.
The overall average winning bid from Innovative’s auctions is now $1.33 million.
Over 100 gTLDs had been committed to the second round by various applicants — which put up 68 strings and wound up winning three — but the auctions can obviously only go ahead if the whole contention set agrees to participate.
According to Innovative, these are the winners this week:

  • .guide: Donuts
  • .construction: Donuts
  • .storage: Extra Space Storage (applying as Self Storage LLC)
  • .desi: Desi Networks
  • .expert: Donuts
  • .fishing: Top Level Domain Holdings
  • .casa: Top Level Domain Holdings
  • .网址 (.wangzhi): Hu Yi Global

These were all two-applicant contention sets (Go Daddy had originally applied for .casa, but withdrew its application months ago).
Losing applicants — which get to take home the winning’s bidder’s cash, net Innovative’s fees — were Demand Media, Afilias, Dot Construction, and Red Circle.
The DI PRO Application Tracker will be updated daily as and when the losing applications are withdrawn. So far, only Donuts’ bid for .casa has had its withdrawal processed by ICANN.
Innovative seemed to blame the low turnout on the August holiday period, and said it has scheduled its third round of auctions for September 10.



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