On 17th December the prioritisation draw for the new gTLD’s (Generic Top Level Domains) took place after applicants paid a fee of $100 to be allocated a priority number. This number determined the order in which applications travel through the remaining stages of the validation process for iCANN. Details of the bingo relevance for this can be found here.
In amongst the gTLD’s that appealed to big gaming brands like William Hill were dot bingo, dot casino and dot poker. Two companies bidding on the dot bingo were dot Bingo Ltd and Sand Cedar LLC – the former was allocated number 645 and the latter 1257.
For dot casino there were more applicants and this is how their allocation went:
- 771 – Binky Sky LLC
- 1549 – dot Casino Ltd
- 1615 – Affilias Ltd
- 1630 – dot Beauty LLC
Dot bet was another gTLD that attracted the interest of a number of big online gaming companies including Ladbrokes who picked up allocation number 987.
William Hill have application number 965 for dot williamhill whilst Ladbrokes have application number 775 for dot Ladbrokes. The fee for having a brand gTLD is reported to be in the region of $185,000 as a one off payment with an annual renewal fee of $25,000 – a cost that could easily be covered by these brands but would it really be something that we started to see in the address bar or search engines. Rather than visiting bingo.ladbrokes.com, the web address could read, should the brand be allocated the gTLD, bingo.ladbrokes.
