UNR getting out of the registry business with $17 million no-reserve auctions on 23 new gTLDs

UNR, the former Uniregistry, plans to auction off its portfolio of 23 new gTLD contracts in April.

The company, owned by domain investor Frank Schilling, said on a new web site at auction.link:

In a move to completely dedicate the company and its resources to its backend registry and IP rights protection services, UNR has announced that 23 of its Top Level Domain assets will be sold in no-reserve auctions on April 28, 2021.

The TLDs will be sold individually, rather than as a package.

While they’re all no-reserve auctions, the published starting prices add up to $16,870,000. Some have minimum bids of zero, some are less than the price UNR paid ICANN for its application fee back in 2012.

Here’s a list of the TLDs, along with their starting prices.

[table id=63 /]

The prices appear to be based on the reg fee and volume of existing registrations, which range wildly from around 300 for .hiv to 159,000 for .link. The .country gTLD, aimed at country music makers and fans, currently has no starting bid listed.

The most-likely buyers of these gTLDs would be the rapidly dwindling list of fellow portfolio registries, such as Donuts and Radix.

While UNR’s exit from the registry business may be surprising — Schilling was a big fan of new gTLDs and Uniregistry applied for 54 of them, investing $69 million — it’s merely the latest stage of the business being dismantled.

Uniregistry sold its registrar and secondary market businesses to GoDaddy last year, and later sold its stake in three car-related gTLDs to business partner XYZ.com.

UNR said the April auctions will be managed over one day by Innovative Auctions, which is pretty much the de facto standard player in new gTLD auctions.

While the company says the auctions are open to “businesses and individuals”, I’m pretty sure ICANN rules forbid a gTLD being owned by individuals.

The company now plans to focus on being a pure-play back-end registry services provider, with a focus on dot-brand gTLDs, where it will continue to compete with the likes of GoDaddy, CentralNic, Donuts and Verisign.

.hiv reserve set at $200,000, revenue so far $83,000

The soon-to-be-auctioned new gTLD .hiv has a reserve price of $200,000, but the registry reckons it’s worth as much as $700,000.
That’s according to auction documents provided by dotHIV Registry to DI today.
The documents also reveal that .hiv has made a profit revenue of $83,000 in its first seven months.
UPDATE: Germany-based dotHIV says now that the reference to “net income” in its prospectus was a translation error. The $83,000 refers to revenue — the top line, not the bottom line. The company intends to update its auction documents “instantly”.
Earlier today we reported that the gTLD is to go under the hammer with Innovative Auctions on June 3/4.
We reported that the gTLD had about 2,000 registrations, but it turns out that number includes about 1,700 registry-reserved names.
The actual number, as of March 31, is 410, of which 345 pay the $179 annual registry fee. Another 63 domains were given away for free to HIV charities for a three-year period.
While this generated a net income revenue of $83,000, registry CEO Carolin Silbernagl confirmed to DI that its contract with ICANN is supposed to require “all” of its profits to be donated to HIV causes.
According to the documents:

Public Interest Commitment binds the TLD to non-profit operations. All excess profit, after the deduction of all thinkable costs and investments, is to be donated to a charitable cause of the owner’s choice.
…
We have founded and built the .hiv TLD as a tool for positive social impact. To safeguard this vision, the voluntary PIC in the .hiv Registry Agreement binds the owner to invest all excess profit in the projects that support the fight against AIDS.
All this comes at no risk for the registry: Operational costs are covered first. No one expects you to donate if there is no surplus. Costs include the purchase price of the TLD in this auction.

The registry’s documents affirm that the key reason to buy .hiv would be to boost your public image due to “corporate social responsibility”.
The buyer would also get free marketing support from the German ad agency thjnk and free data escrow from NCC Group until July 2017, along with a bunch of software dotHIV uses to manage the TLD.
According to dotHIV, there were 14,000 pre-registrations with registrars prior to launch. Most balked at the high registration fee and did not convert into buyers.
The registry says the new owner could capitalize on some of this interest, growing volumes, by reducing its registry fee.
There are 47 registrars accredited to sell .hiv domains, including Go Daddy.
Premium names sold so far, for between $1,500 and $5,000, include: treat.hiv, test.hiv, cure.hiv, prevent.hiv, magazin.hiv, hivanswers.hiv, prävention.hiv, prep.hiv, vorsorge.hiv.
If dotHIV makes a profit from selling the gTLD, it says it will donate it to HIV charities.

.hiv to auction with “no profiting” catch

Don’t all rush to your checkbooks at once.
The live TLD .hiv is going to be among the next batch of new gTLDs auctioned off by Innovative Auctions, but the contract comes with a no-profit clause.
Innovative and dotHIV Registry announced the sale yesterday.
.hiv is an unsuccessful gTLD so far. It had just over 2,000 registered names at the end of 2014, according to registry reports, but never more than 423 the names have been present in the DNS.
Registry CEO Carolin Silbernagl said:

In the eight months since our launch we have gained a lot of insight about what it needs to reach this. The reason why we are offering .hiv for sale is because we see how successful it can be. However, we realized that dotHIV is not the right vehicle for the next phase – the TLD needs a bigger and more international home to truly spread its wings.

It went to general availability last August, with an innovative but risky business model based around charitable micro-donations to HIV/AIDS causes.
Of the $200 annual retail fee, dotHIV put $120 into a pool reserved for charities. Every visit to a .hiv that was participating in a “Click Counter” service would cause a small amount of that money to actually be donated.
Judging by visits to a few .hiv domains this morning, just €862 — less than $1,000 — has been donated so far, based on fewer than 133,000 clicks.
This donation model is “just one of many possible uses” and not a contractual requirement, according to Silbernagl.
There is, however, a binding Public Interest Commitment that obliges the registry to give “all excess profits” to HIV causes. The PIC reads:

Registry Operator commits to implementing and performing the following protections for the TLD: Registry Operator, as a social enterprise, is driven by its sole mission to support the global HIV response. Therefore, Registry Operator will reinvest all excess profits in projects serving this mission.

Not it’s not exactly an attractive investment opportunity, in terms of pure cash ROI.
But Innovative said there’s another reason to buy: “Approaching .hiv as a corporate philanthropic engagement could have positive effects on public image and employee satisfaction for the buyer.”
.hiv is due to be part of the June 3/4 live gTLD auction, which also includes .promo.

.reise is first live new gTLD to hit the auction block

German domain registry Dotreise has become the first company to reveal that it wants to sell off a new gTLD.
Innovative Auctions is to handle an auction on February 27 at which Dotreise will attempt to unload the unwanted string, it emerged this evening.
The word “reise” is German for “travel”.
The gTLD has failed to capture much interest since it launched. As of today, it has just 1,254 domains in its zone file, about 1,000 of which were registered in its first week of general availability last August.
At launch, it had just a handful of registrars. Only four registrars sold more than 100 names in August.
It’s currently a relatively big-ticket TLD, which may account for the low sales. It retails for about $170 to $180 at United-Domains, the registrar that has shifted the most .reise names to date.
That would put revenue for .reise at under a quarter of a million dollars a year, based on its current volume, I guess.
It competes with Donuts’ .reisen, which has pretty much the same meaning but has been available a month longer and retails for under $25 a year; .reisen has a slightly bigger zone file, at 3,839 domains.
According to Innovative, the company behind Applicant Auction, which helps settle new gTLD contention sets with auctions:

The .REISE TLA will be a simultaneous ascending clock auction, similar to the format of the Applicant Auction. There will be no buyer commission for this auction, so no additional fees – you just pay the winning price if you win.

It’s a one-day auction.
Innovative had planned to auction off multiple live gTLDs in October, but was hit by delays.

TLDH raises $5 million from gTLD auctions

Top Level Domain Holdings made almost $5 million by losing auctions for the .lawyer and .website gTLDs this week, according to the company.
The London-listed company told the markets today that it has added £2.97 million ($4.81 million) to its coffers as a result of the auctions, in which Radix won .website and Donuts won .lawyer.
The number is net of the 4% cut taken by Innovative, which conducted the auctions, and the two $65,000 refunds TLDH will receive from ICANN when it withdraws the applications.
Some portion of the $4.8 million TLDH will have received from Donuts, where .lawyer was a two-horse race.
Radix’s winning bid for .website will have been split evenly between TLDH and Donuts.
At least one of these TLDs seems to have sold for significantly more than the average private auction selling price, which was $1.33 million after the first 14 Innovative auctions.
Innovative has managed auctions for 18 strings, but we don’t know the total price of the latest four.
The .website and .lawyer deals means TLDH now has £10.1 million ($16.3 million) in cash reserves, according to a company press release.
It still has 43 contested applications, however. On a $16 million budget — quite a lot less than some of its portfolio rivals — the company is going to have to make some smart tactical moves to maximize its gTLD portfolio.
“Our strategy remains to best monetise those applications where we see least value so that we can maximise our ability to acquire those names in which we see greatest value,” chairman Fred Krueger said in the press release.
It still has stakes in 25 uncontested gTLDs.
NOTE: An earlier version of this story contained inaccurate statements — failing to take into account that .website was a three-way contest — about the average selling price of new gTLDs at auction.

Directi’s Radix wins .website gTLD auction

Directi-affiliated TLD registry Radix, has won the private auction for the .website gTLD, according to Radix.
The company beat rival portfolio applicants Donuts and Top Level Domain Holdings to the string, in an auction that was managed by Innovative Auctions, likely one of several going on this week.
There’s no outstanding Governmental Advisory Committee advice or objections to the Radix application, so its path to contracting and eventual delegation should be relatively uncontroversial now.
The price was undisclosed, Innovative’s standard terms.
Directi is in the process of being acquired by Endurance International, owner of Domain.com, which promised Radix up to $62 million to help with its gTLD auctions.

Second private auction nets $1.2m per gTLD

Only eight new gTLD contention sets were resolved during Innovative Auctions second round of private auctions this week, and the average winning bid has gone down.
The eight strings sold for a combine $9,651,000, or an average of $1.2 million per string. That’s down from the $1.5 million average reported from the first round of auctions in June.
The overall average winning bid from Innovative’s auctions is now $1.33 million.
Over 100 gTLDs had been committed to the second round by various applicants — which put up 68 strings and wound up winning three — but the auctions can obviously only go ahead if the whole contention set agrees to participate.
According to Innovative, these are the winners this week:

• .guide: Donuts
• .construction: Donuts
• .storage: Extra Space Storage (applying as Self Storage LLC)
• .desi: Desi Networks
• .expert: Donuts
• .fishing: Top Level Domain Holdings
• .casa: Top Level Domain Holdings
• .网址 (.wangzhi): Hu Yi Global

These were all two-applicant contention sets (Go Daddy had originally applied for .casa, but withdrew its application months ago).
Losing applicants — which get to take home the winning’s bidder’s cash, net Innovative’s fees — were Demand Media, Afilias, Dot Construction, and Red Circle.
The DI PRO Application Tracker will be updated daily as and when the losing applications are withdrawn. So far, only Donuts’ bid for .casa has had its withdrawal processed by ICANN.
Innovative seemed to blame the low turnout on the August holiday period, and said it has scheduled its third round of auctions for September 10.

TLDH commits to four private gTLD auctions

Top Level Domain Holdings has committed four of its applied-for gTLDs to private auctions due to kick off tomorrow.
The four strings are .guide, .casa, .网址 (“web address” in Chinese) and .fishing, each of which has only one competing applicant.
The company will bid against Donuts on .casa and .guide, Demand Media on .fishing and Hu Yi Global Information Resources on .网址.
Results of the auctions, managed by Innovative Auctions, are expected to be announced next week.
TLDH was initially cautious about the idea of private auctions, but later decided to participate, for reasons CEO Antony Van Couvering explained in this June article.
Over 100 strings, including 68 from Donuts, are expected to be hitting the block with Innovative this week. The first six strings to be auctioned this way raised an average of $1.5 million per string.
TLDH has 49 strings in active contention.

Donuts details second private gTLD auction list

Donuts has committed 68 of its new gTLD applications to a set of private auctions due to commence August 13.
It’s the second round of auctions conducted by Innovative Auctions, which last month settled six contention sets for an average of $1.5 million per TLD.
Here’s the full list of Donuts’ strings:

.apartments .hot .art .jewelry .auction .law .audio .lawyer .baseball .legal .beauty .life .blog .living .boats .loans .broadway .memorial .broker .online .cafe .phone .casa .pizza .chat .place .church .plus .city .property .construction .rent .data .run .deals .salon .direct .school .discount .search .dog .show .expert .site .fish .soccer .football .storage .forum .store .furniture .studio .fyi .style .garden .team .global .theater .gratis .trading .group .website .guide .wedding .help .world .hosting .yoga

It’s very similar to the list of 63 strings that Donuts committed to the first round of auctions, which was under-subscribed by its rivals.
The additions since then are: .broker, .casa, .data, .deals, .dog,. expert, .lawyer, .life, .loans, .place, .property, .rent, studio, .website, .world and .yoga.
This list does not include the six gTLDs that were settled in the first round, for obvious reasons, but the following strings have also been removed: .forsale, .juegos, .marketing, .media, .sale.
Some of those appear to have been removed because Donuts has already won the contention set due to withdrawals.
The list still includes many in which Donuts is in a contention set with Uniregistry, which has previously said it would not participate in private auctions due to legal concerns.
Innovative said recently that over 100 applications had been committed to the August 13 auction.
It had previously said that the over 40 strings being applied for by applicants that had participated in the first auction had also been committed.
The deadline for committing to the auction is August 5.

Next new gTLD auction set for August 13

Innovative Auctions today announced that its second new gTLD auction is scheduled for August 13 and that several companies have already signed up to participate.
The news follows the settlement of the first round of auctions, which saw $9.01 million shared between losing applicants and Innovative for the rights to six new gTLD strings.
“[A]ll of the participants from this auction who have additional strings in contention have signed on to use the process to resolve their remaining contentions,” Innovative said.
That would mean Afilias, Merchant Law Group and XYZ.com, which took part in this month’s auctions, are all likely to attempt to settle their outstanding contention sets with Innovative.
That’s another roughly 40 strings on top of Donuts’ already-committed monster portfolio.
Of course, the auctions will only be able to go ahead if all of the other applicants in each contention set also agree to participate, which in some cases will be a non-starter.
The money from the first auctions has already been distributed to the losing applicants, according to Innovative.