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ICANN spending $365,000 a year on coffee and booze

Kevin Murphy, April 9, 2025, 18:12:35 (UTC), Domain Policy

Scrapping coffee breaks and cocktail receptions is among a raft of proposals ICANN has floated in an effort to cut the cost of its public meetings and get its budget under control.

The Org is also thinking about making some meetings shorter or going online-only in order to cut costs, which were estimated to come in at around $14 million in ICANN’s current fiscal year.

But ICANN has shelved the idea of starting to charge community members to attend, after many pointed out that it could disenfranchise less well-funded would-be attendees.

The proposals, which were developed from seeds put forward by Org and refined with a small group of community volunteers and public sessions at recent meetings, have now been put out for formal public comment

One eyebrow-raising stat, new to me, was that the “current estimated cost of networking receptions and coffee breaks is approximately $365,000 annually”. Meetings typically have two coffee breaks per day and two scheduled evening receptions per meeting.

While $365,000 may seem like a lot, consider that it’s spread over three meetings and about 2,000 attendees per meeting. If each attendee on average has a couple of coffees and a couple of glasses of wine at each event, one could easily argue it’s not really that expensive per head.

But the proposals out for comment suggest that any networking event that does not have an external sponsor could be scrapped.

ICANN’s also talking about shortening its Community Forum — the first of the year’s three meetings, typically held in March — by one day by shifting the Public Forum from Thursday to Monday, so the venue’s main ballroom only has to be rented for one day.

Org reckons it could save $460,000 a year by dropping the last day altogether, also eliminating one hotel night for each funded traveller. It turns out the Thursday sessions are lightly attended anyway, with room utilization rates at 20% to 30%, compared to the 60% to 80% earlier in the meeting.

ICANN reckons it could also save money — 10% to 20% per meeting, which works out to many hundreds of thousands of dollars — by switching to an online-only or hybrid model for one meeting a year. Such meetings were the standard during the recent pandemic.

It is also considering whether to reduce the variety of cities it holds its meetings in. It reckons it could cut costs by picking more economical locations and signing multi-year bulk deals with venues.

The proposals come almost a year after ICANN announced it was looking to slash its budget in response to stagnating revenue.

The proposals are now open for comment until May 19.

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Comments (1)

  1. NamerTips says:
    April 11, 2025 at 4:16 pm

    ICANN should really opt for an overhaul of the organization and not just budget cuts. As of now, it appears they believe what/how they spend is the biggest culprit in revenue stagnation but it’s really the unsustainable model they have have as it relates to their innovation and policy enforcement strategies. Some people believe ICANN has a lethargic operation and minimal impact in the grand scheme of the evolving domain name landscape. It’s not a very inclusive organization and carries a vibe reminiscent of the early 1990’s – a time where coffee and ballroom receptions might’ve been more fitting. The fact it’s 2025, and ICANN is thinking hybrid conferences to cut cost, and not because virtual events are a thing, speaks to the fact they’ve probably ridden the wave of being the only governing party over the domain space for a little too long. An overhaul in policies, procedures, principles and an ethics review is due. The time for change is NOW.

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