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Looks like .fans has a new Chinese owner
Kevin Murphy,
July 25, 2019, 11:34:06 (UTC),
Domain Registries
It appears that the struggling new gTLD .fans has changed ownership for the second time in a year.
According to ICANN’s web site, the .fans Registry Agreement was assigned to a company called ZDNS International on June 28.
Since August 2018, the contract had been in the hands of a CentralNic subsidiary called Fans TLD, having been originally operated by Asiamix Digital.
ZDNS International appears to be a newish Hong Kong subsidiary of major China-based DNS service provider ZDNS.
ZDNS provides DNS services for more than 20 TLDs, mostly Chinese-language, but as far as I can tell it is not the contracted party for any.
It’s also known for providing registry gateway services for non-Chinese registries that want to set up shop in the country.
CentralNic took over .fans last year after Asiamix failed to get the TLD’s sales to take off.
.fans had about 1,700 domains under management at the time, and it’s been pretty much flat ever since. I don’t think CentralNic has been promoting it.
Over the same period, singular competitor .fan, which Donuts acquired from Asiamix last year, has gone from 0 to almost 3,000 registrations.
If CentralNic, a public company, made a profit on the flip it does not appear to have been material enough to require disclosure to shareholders.
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