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Afilias buys the other half of .global

Kevin Murphy, June 25, 2019, Domain Registries

Afilias has acquired one of its new gTLD back-end customers, Dot Global Domain Registry Limited, the registry for .global.
It immediately makes .global Afilias’ best-performing 2012-round new gTLD.
The price of the deal, between two private companies, was undisclosed.
As DI reported last November, Afilias already owned 45% of the company, which had 2017 revenue of $1.9 million and a $320,000 loss.
.global is a relatively good new gTLD business, as new gTLDs go.
We’re looking at a business with probably still low-seven-digit annual revenue, with annual adds and renewals trending upwards.
It had over 48,000 domain under management at the last count, with about about 22,500 annual renews.
The names renew at $100 at GoDaddy, which with 30% of .global regs is the largest .global registrar.
NameCheap, the second-largest registrar (with 11%), renews at about $65.
Anecdotally, it’s a new gTLD that I regularly come across in the wild, which is still relatively noteworthy. It’s often used by multinational companies for global gateway sites.
Afilias said that because .global already runs on its back-end, there won’t be any burdensome migration work for registrars, just some “paperwork will need to be updated”.
In terms of domains under management, .global immediately becomes Afilias’ highest-volume new gTLD (excluding pre-2012 .info, .pro and .mobi).
Its biggest 2012-round TLD, from the about 20 it owns, was .red, with around 34,000 DUM.

.global a victim of new gTLD launch cluster?

Kevin Murphy, September 10, 2014, Domain Registries

Poor GA-day results from .global are being blamed on registrars being swamped by a cluster of new gTLD launches occurring in close proximity.
Dot Global added 1,074 domains in the first seven hours of .global’s general availability, bringing its zone to 1,637 names in total.
CEO Rolf Larsen told us the number of registrations yesterday was actually closer to 1,200.
The numbers aren’t great for a first day, considering that .global is in place at about 80 registrars, but Larsen said that the lack of a long runway of pre-registrations was to blame.
“We are not unhappy with the 1,200, but unhappy to not have had months of pre-regs to make that number higher,” he said.
“Most registrars don’t even do pre-regs,” he said. “Those who do have had a hard time keeping up with all the launches. Our launch was in a very busy period, so difficult to get on board with all those registrars early. Some, including GoDaddy did pre-regs for us, but over just a few weeks instead of months like with many other launches.”
Go Daddy was the biggest registrar yesterday, he said.
Dot Global has a number of plans to increase its marketing over the coming weeks and months, by itself and in conjunction with its registrar partners.
These plans include broad promotions to registrars’ existing customer bases as well as targeted mailings to companies that already have the word “global” at the second level of their domains.