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One of the dumbest gTLDs just switched back-ends

Kevin Murphy, June 16, 2025, Domain Registries

Why does .blockbuster still exist, seriously?

Old-timers such as your humble correspondent will recall Blockbuster as the once world-conquering video rental chain that spectacularly failed to adapt to adapt to the era of Netflix and streaming and went almost completely out of business.

I say almost because, as was widely reported a few years back, there’s still one branch of Blockbuster open. It’s in Bend, Oregon and has sidelines as a tourist destination and, more lucratively, selling ironic merch mocking its own inexplicable existence.

So that’s a whole dot-brand gTLD essentially for a single retail outlet. Possibly the only smaller, dumber gTLD is .richardli, which is a dot-brand representing just one dude, Hong Kong billionaire Richard Li.

The Bend store is a franchisee, so it pays Dish DBS, owner of the brand, a licensing fee to use its trademark. But the gTLD is unused. Blockbuster has a holding page at blockbuster.com while the Bend store uses bendblockbuster.com.

Why mention this at all? Well, Dish has just changed the back-end registry services provider for .blockbuster and all of its other dormant dot-brands from Identity Digital to Tucows, indicating that it has no plans to terminate its ICANN registry contracts just yet.

.sling, .dish, .latino, .dot, .ott, .ollo, .mobile, .dtv, .dvr, .phone, and .data, none of which have any registered domains (but several of which would surely prove attractive to an acquiring portfolio registry) have also made the move to Tucows.

(Actually, .ollo may be an even dumber dot-brand given that the brand doesn’t exist and seemingly never has existed. Dish filed for a trademark on the string in 2011 but never used it.)

Running a gTLD isn’t free. The current ICANN fee alone is $25,800 a year per string. While Dish had $10.6 billion in revenue last year, its parent, EchoStar, is currently circling the drain-hole of Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Ironically, EchoStar faces the dire choice because the US Federal Communications Commission is threatening to revoke some of its 5G spectrum licenses because the company acquired the licenses then didn’t use them.