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No $8 million discount for dot-brands, says ICANN

Kevin Murphy, July 11, 2023, 16:33:45 (UTC), Domain Registries

ICANN has rejected a request for a 80% discount on registry fees paid by dot-brand gTLD operators.

The Brand Registry Group had asked ICANN in May for a reduction in the annual fixed fee from $25,000 to $5,000, largely on the basis that they have essentially no abuse and require very little Compliance oversight.

But interim CEO Sally Costerton has now responded to “respectfully decline” the request, which would have wiped out about $8 million of ICANN’s annual budget, about 5% of its total revenue.

“The cost to support New gTLDs is not merely based on the number of domains under management or the level of abuse. Regardless of the size of the TLD, registry operators must still comply with the Registry Agreement and associated policies, and ICANN must monitor that compliance,” Costerton wrote.

Dot-brands already have lower fees because they uniformly don’t pass the 50,000 domains limit at which transactional fees kick in, she said.

There are mechanisms in the Base Registry Agreement that all amendments to be made, she said.


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Comments (1)

  1. Matthias Pfeifer says:

    I would assume that are .brand TLDs the most “expensive”. All those dying .brands create costs.

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