Several contention sets have been settled via various types of auctions. The first type is called Applicant Auction, and it is aimed at effectively resolving conflicts among bidders. In such an auction, the winner’s payment is divided among those who call off their bids. An ICANN auction is based on conventional rules, and the losers do not get anything.
Both types of auctions took place last week. Afilias, a global registry operator, won the Applicant Auction for the lucrative gaming domain .poker, while its rivals – Donuts, Famous Four Media and Dot Poker – eventually withdrew their bids. The amounts paid to the losers are not disclosed after such auctions.
At the same time, Afilias lost the ICANN “auction of last resort” for the Chinese gTLD .信息 (the Chinese word translates as information, which is why this domain is often referred to as the Chinese version of .info). The auction was won by the Chinese company Beijing Tele-info Network Technology. Interestingly, the amount of the winning bid has actually been disclosed, according to the ICANN rules, with the comment that the money will go to a special ICANN fund: The winner paid a mere $600,000 for it. Analysts believe the amount could have been much higher and are astonished by Afilias’s decision to drop out at this stage of the bidding for a very promising TLD in the largest and rapidly growing market.
“Many new TLDs are most likely to be used by small communities and therefore have very small market niches,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, CEO of the Coordination Center for TLD RU/РФ. “In such cases, we do not expect a lot of registrations, unlike with countrywide or general TLDs, and consequently, the bids are not high. Otherwise, selling registrations in these domains would not be profitable.”
