The Council of European National Top-Level Domain Registries (CENTR), an association that includes European ccTLD registries, released its Global TLD Market Report for 2019. According to the report, as of January 2020, there were 372 million domain names in the world, and the domain market grew an estimated 3 percent over the previous year. The main drivers of this growth were .COM, .ICU, .SITE and .UK. At the same time median growth in the 300 largest domain zones in January turned out to be 2.6 percent, down from 4.5 percent a year earlier. In ccTLDs, the median growth differed markedly: for example, 1.3 percent for ccTLDs in Asia, and 9 percent in African ccTLDs. However, the latter have relatively few registrations. Median growth of ccTLDs as a whole was zero.
One of the most mature domain markets is Europe. And although its growth has been declining for the past 10 years, the situation there remains stable. Thirty-seven European domain zones account for a total of about 72 million domain names, and in most countries it is ccTLDs that are the most popular. The median growth of European ccTLDs recorded in January was 1.6 percent. The average price of an annual domain name registration in the European countries is 13.60 euros, and the average price during the promotional period is 6.00 euros. At the same time, European ccTLDs are characterized by an extremely high level of registration renewal – 82 percent.
The largest TLD, .COM, showed a growth of 4.6 percent last year, and although this figure exceeds the average market indicators, it is not outstanding for the domain zone itself. If the growth rate of .COM has steadily increased over the years, it now appears to have reached a plateau. This is likely due to an increase in deletions (or non-renewed domains). At the beginning of 2019, the level of registration renewal in .COM was 75 percent, but by the end of the year it had fallen to 71 percent.
In addition, the CENTR reports that the 20 largest domain zones account for 95 percent of all registered domain names, and this trend toward domain concentration in a few major market players persisted throughout the year.
