Latest news of the domain name industry

Recent Posts

Donuts wins five more new gTLD auctions

Kevin Murphy, December 3, 2014, Domain Registries

Donuts added five new gTLDs to its ever-growing portfolio this week, as the results of five private auctions were revealed.
The company won the following strings:
.news — went to Donuts after withdrawals from Merchant Law Group, Amazon, Radix, Uniregistry, Famous Four Media and Primer Nivel. As somebody with a vested interest in the news media, I’m glad this one went to a registry with an open registration policy.
.golf — Donuts beat Famous Four, Dot Golf and Fegistry.
.casino — Donuts won after withdrawals from Famous Four, Afilias and dotBeauty.
.school — Donuts beat Fegistry, Uniregistry and Minds + Machines.
.football — Donuts beat Famous Four.
The registry currently has 156 delegated TLDs, more than half of those it originally applied for. It has another 99 active applications in various stages of pre-delegation.

Casino.com plotting top-level domain bid?

Kevin Murphy, August 16, 2010, Domain Registries

Is this the first gambling-related new top-level domain applicant?
Casino.com, in this frankly odd press release, seems to be dropping hints that it would be interested in applying for a new TLD when ICANN opens up the bids next year.
Discussing the controversy over the porn-only .xxx domain, the release goes on to say:

In spite of this, online casino sites are considering the idea of a unique domain as well, hoping that it will give them the same impact as governments and schools by using .gov and .edu.

It would of course be a huge shock if there were no gambling TLDs proposed in the first round.
I expect a .poker or .casino TLD could be quickly flipped for millions, given the potential value of their sunrise auctions. Casino.com itself was sold for $5.5 million, back in 2003.
Of course, actually applying to ICANN for .poker could be an expensive gambit. With multiple applicants, it’s one TLD that could easily head to auction.