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.web could already be a record-breaker as auction enters day two
It seems likely that .web has already smashed through the $41.5 million record sale price for a new gTLD at ICANN auction.
The auction, which kicked off properly at 1300 UTC yesterday, seems to have ended its first day of bidding at around 2300 UTC last night without a winner.
That suggests, based on the rules and how previous auctions have played out, that we’re probably already looking at high bids over $50 million.
The previous top price for a gTLD at ICANN auction was .shop, which sold to GMO for $41.5 million earlier this year.
The signs are that .web will go for more.
Be warned, this is mostly informed guesswork. I don’t know what the current bids are.
ICANN auctions work in rounds. In each round the minimum bid is either $1 (for round one) or the previous round’s maximum bid (for all subsequent rounds).
The maximum bid in each round is set by the auctioneer, who has broad discretion, based on the action at the time.
The range between minimum and maximum bids seems to get bigger in each passing round, based on previous auction results.
According to ICANN auction rules (pdf) each bidding round lasts 20 minutes and is immediately followed by a 20-minute recess.
This schedule is somewhat flexible. It could be slowed down or sped up with the consent of all bidders.
The .web auction was due to kick off at 1300 UTC yesterday, according to court papers, though it seems probable that round-one bids were accepted the previous night.
The first day’s bidding was due to end at 2330 UTC yesterday.
So that’s over 10 hours of bidding yesterday, which works out to about 15 rounds if they stuck to the 40-minute round schedule.
When .shop sold for $41.5 million, it did so in just 14 rounds, carried out in a single day.
The final round of that auction saw an acceptable bidding range of $36.8 million to $46 million — an almost $10 million spread.
So, if we can assume that there were at least 15 rounds in the .web auction yesterday and we can assume that the auctioneer is following a similar playbook to the .shop auction, the maximum bid when the auction paused overnight was likely well over $50 million.
By the time you read this, this guesswork could be moot anyway. I expect we’ll find out later today whether those assumptions were accurate. It seems unlikely that a third day’s bidding will be required.
The applicants for .web are NDC, Radix, Donuts, Schlund, Afilias, Google and Web.com. Vistaprint’s bid for .webs is also in the auction.
Given the somewhat slow response of the market to gtlds, I would have thought the interest in this auction would be less. Hope I’m wrong.
According to twitter: 135 million!
Well, that answers that question. Even if we’d applied, I really don’t have $136,000,000 sitting around.
Who does?
(Rhetorical question, that)