CircleID News What ICANN’s Contention Sets Reveal About New gTLD Values

[CircleID]

ICANN's Reveal Day list holds 263 contention sets. With private deals banned this round, any set that reaches an ICANN auction will end in a public price. The 2012 auctions show why the number of bidders is a weak guide to that price.

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[ElhagMousab]

Contention only tells you how many people wanted the string on reveal day, not what the extension is worth once it exists. In the 2012 round I watched sets with three or four applicants close at mid five figures because none of them had a real business case behind the string, while a two applicant set went deep into seven figures because one party needed that exact word for a brand it already owned. So if the point is learning something usable for your own buying, the number to follow is not the auction price but registration and renewal behaviour two or three years later, since that is what decides whether names in that extension hold any kind of resale floor. The public auction price does have a second effect worth planning for: sellers in that TLD treat it as an anchor and push asking prices for a few months, which is usually when I stop buying there and wait for the story to fade. I keep a short note of results per extension for exactly this reason, because the registry's version of value and a buyer's version rarely match.

 

[Galibs]

Contention only tells you how many people wanted the string on reveal day, not what the extension is worth once it exists. In the 2012 round I watched sets with three or four applicants close at mid five figures because none of them had a real business case behind the string, while a two applicant set went deep into seven figures because one party needed that exact word for a brand it already owned. So if the point is learning something usable for your own buying, the number to follow is not the auction price but registration and renewal behaviour two or three years later, since that is what decides whether names in that extension hold any kind of resale floor. The public auction price does have a second effect worth planning for: sellers in that TLD treat it as an anchor and push asking prices for a few months, which is usually when I stop buying there and wait for the story to fade. I keep a short note of results per extension for exactly this reason, because the registry's version of value and a buyer's version rarely match.

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@ElhagMousab Author here; thanks for reading. Fair point. The auction number only shows what one bidder paid for the whole extension; it doesn’t tell you what a name under it will resell for. Renewals after 2-3 years is a better thing to track, I agree. The anchoring part is real too; sellers do bump their asking prices after a big headline sale. That’s why I only look at closed sales.