.basketball domain emerges under GoDaddy with fewer hoops
The .basketball gTLD has finally had its coming-out party, with the registry announcing general availability this week.
Fédération Internationale de Basketball has outsourced management of the gTLD to sports marketing agency Roar Domains, doing business here as Roar.Basketball, which in turn is using GoDaddy Registry for the technical registry functions.
The domain has been in a seemingly interminable series of qualified launch programs, community priority registration phases and sunrise periods for the last four years, but FIBA said yesterday .basketball is now open to all-comers.
Technically, it’s been in general availability for a few months, but the broader marketing effort only began this week.
Right now, it’s being marketed via Roar’s site at be.basketball, where the base registration price is $50 a year. Premiums are available at higher prices.
Roar appears to be using Australian registrar Bombora Technologies, which GoDaddy acquired as part of its Neustar deal last year, as its primary — possibly exclusive — registrar.
Roar’s FAQ states that be.basketball “is the only site where you can register and manage a .basketball domain name”.
Other registrars are accredited, and almost 20 have a handful of presumed sunrise regs, but currently Bombora holds 80% of the 600 domains currently under management.
Weirdly, GoDaddy itself does not appear to currently sell .basketball names through its primary storefront.
Roar/FIBA originally had MMX as its partner, with CentralNic as its back-end, but that changed earlier this year when GoDaddy acquired most of MMX’s assets, including the .basketball relationship.
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