Ladbrokes and William Hill were the only major UK online gambling companies to submit applications to register and run their own dot.brand domains, it was revealed today.
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the California-based non-profit body that administrates the Internet’s naming system for “top-level” international domains or gTLDs, revealed the 1,930 applications for hundreds of new suffixes at a “Reveal Day” in London this afternoon.
The initial application fee to ICANN for the companies to own and run their own .ladbrokes and .williamhill domains is US$185,000, with an annual renewal fee of US$25,000. Start-up costs for companies to run their own domains, as opposed to entrusting this to the traditional registry owners and operators of top level domains such as .com and .net have however been estimated to be as high as US$500,000, with annual running costs reaching US$100,000.
With the major US land-based casino giants conspicuous by their absence from the first wave of applications, Malaysian casino giant Genting, the UK’s largest land-based casino operator that also runs Playtech-powered poker and casino in the UK, was the only other high-profile gambling company to apply to run its own dot.brand domain. Virgin also applied for use of the .virgin domain, but this is likely to be preserved for use by the main Virgin brands.
Ladbrokes has also applied for use of the .bet domain, but with three other interested parties, faces the prospect of a potentially costly bidding war to secure this as well as its .ladbrokes domain. There were also two applications for .bingo, four for .casino, four for .poker and two for .racing. While Ladbrokes was the only sector applicant under its own brand for the dot.gambling-related domains, London-listed spreadbetting company IG Group applied for the .trading, .forex and .spreadbetting domains, among others.
A company based in the main European offshore gambling hub of Gibraltar, Famous Four Media, submitted 61 applications, including for all the dot.gambling gTLDs listed above and for “win”, the name recently chosen by bwin.party for its new social media arm, as well as “party”, but it was unclear whether the individual who filed these applications, Mr Geir Andreas Rasmussen, was doing so to acquire the brands for his company or on behalf of third parties who wished to remain anonymous. Famous Four also applied for all the major sports suffixes, including .sport, .football, .soccer and .tennis.
Domain speculators indeed featured prominently among the many companies who applied to secure their dot.brands. Daniel Schindler, former CEO of domain registry CentralNic, bid for 307 via his Donuts Inc vehicle backed with around US$100m of venture capital money, while Frank Schilling’s specially established Uniregistry vehicle applied for 54 to add to his existing portfolio of 320,000.
ICANN has argued that the move to allow organisations to choose their own top level domains will encourage innovation and provide new commercial opportunities by giving domain owners new marketing tools and the ability to build new communities and strengthen ties with customers. Acquiring their own dot.brand domains would allow Ladbrokes, Hill’s and others to create new product-led channels such as www.poker.ladbrokes, www.casino.ladbrokes and www.bingo.ladbrokes, ostensibly broadening opportunities for traffic generation.
A host of leading US corporations however declared their opposition during the application process that opened back in January, with the Association of National Advertisers lobbying against the move on behalf of members including Coca Cola, Gap and Ford. The corporations argued in Washington that it would cost each of them around US$2m to protect their trademarks across hundreds of the new internet domains. ICANN stated it would put aside US$60,000 from each application to settle any legal disputes.
Gap and Ford were however among today’s applicants, alongside other US giants such as Apple and Google, which applied for .Google, .YouTube, .docs and .lol among others. Imaging giant Canon has even declared its intention to abandon using Canon.com in favour of .Canon.
A 60-day comment period, allowing anyone in the world to have their say on any application, also opened yesterday. The domains are planned for launch in 2013, following ICANN completing its consultation period.
