Donuts CEO Paul Stahura has written in his blog that Donuts participated in roughly 50 applicant TLD auctions and spent $50 millionto win half of those auctions. This suggests that Donuts, one of the leading Internet domain name registries, spent over $2 million on average per TLD. This is the first time that information about TLD bills at private applicant auctions has been made public.
“A $2 million auction bill is quite a lot, and in some cases it can increase total spending on buying a TLD by 50% or even 100% [in private TLD auctions, the winner pays the losers]. The TLDs in this case must be potentially very popular domains for which Donuts has big commercial plans, because narrow niche zones are unlikely to be worth such spending,” said Marina Nikerova, Senior Deputy Director of the Technical Center of Internet.
