Verisign has published a report for the first quarter of the year. In total 9.5 million new names were registered during the first three months of 2017 in domain zones .COM and .NET managed by the company. This number is lower than last year's result for the same period (10 million new registrations). However, DomainNameWire points out that the Chinese “domain boom” happened in first three months of last year, that’s why it’s not really correct to compare the results of last and this year. For example, there were 8.7 million new registrations in .COM and .NET in the first quarter of 2015.
Nevertheless, the number of new registrations in the first quarter significantly exceeded the expectations of the company itself. As a result, the growth in the number of registrations in .COM and .NET ended up being higher than expected by Verisign analysts. In the first quarter it was 1.4 million registrations, while the company expected it to be in between 0.7 and 1.2 million. Verisign believes that the ads shown during the Super Bowl (championship game of the National Football League) might have contributed to this success. This event is considered to be the main show of the American TV season; over 100 million viewers watch it.
