ICANN has released its draft budget for the 2022 fiscal year. Like many US companies and government organisations, the fiscal year for ICANN begins on July 1 and ends on June 30. Thus, the draft applies to the period between July 1, 2021, and June 30, 2022.
ICANN managers are being cautiously optimistic and predicting $144.4 million in revenue, which is $4.4 million more than the current fiscal year. It is expected that registration-related transactions across all domain zones (registration, extension and domain name transfer) will earn the corporation $3 million more in fees than the year before. However, ICANN’s budget will be $600,000 short on registry fixed fees as 15 new gTLDs (most likely, brand domains) are expected to close next year. It should be remembered though that in this calendar year alone, various companies have already dropped 16 brand domains.
The corporation is also expecting a slight increase in the number of accredited domain registrars – supposedly, by 28 registrars to 2,356. Finally, it is important to note that the 2022 fiscal year budget includes the cost of three ICANN conferences – in-person rather than online. Domain Incite ironically comments that last April, ICANN had to review its current budget in haste. The adjustments were rather pessimistic as the pandemic-triggered economic crisis was predicted to hit the domain industry hard. In reality, the opposite happened. The majority of registrars and registries demonstrated excellent financial results because lockdowns all over the world seriously boosted internet activity. We’d like to think that ICANN’s optimistic financial forecast will not turn out as accurate as its previous pessimistic prognosis.
