The authorities of the tiny Polynesian state of Tuvalu have announced that the tender for the right to manage its country code domain, .TV, is now over. It was won by GoDaddy. It is noteworthy that the domain zone’s last registry, Verisign, simply did not take part in the tender. Neither GoDaddy nor Verisign have released official statements, but according to some sources from Verisign, the company decided to let the contract to manage the domain zone go for business reasons.
According to the terms of the previous contract between Tuvalu and Verisign, the country received about $5 million a year from the registry. Considering that the population of Tuvalu is about 11,000, and the gross domestic product is estimated at $60 million, it is easy to see how important the country code domain is for the state. Registration in .TV is open to anyone, and the domain zone is very popular, especially among streaming services. Domain Incite notes that the .TV domain was among the first top level TLDs to offer stepped pricing, with premium names carrying higher price tags. Today this is almost standard practice for most domain zones.
The terms of GoDaddy’s contract to manage .TV have not been disclosed, but analysts believe that Tuvalu found $5 million too little and envisaged a larger slice of the pie from the domain’s income. However, the new registry will hardly lose out: the number of domains registered in .TV is estimated at about half a million and continues to grow, and the cost of a standard annual registration is about $50. On the other hand, for Verisign, which manages .COM, giving up .TV is unlikely to be a significant financial blow.
