Dot Vegas’ registration goals seem lofty.
The Las Vegas city council is considering signing off on a private company going after the .vegas top level domain name when ICANN eventually opens up the namespace. The council just delayed a vote until February so the major can weigh in.
Dot Vegas Inc., which wants to get the city council’s blessing for the domain name, has promised a share of the profits. It will pay 50 cents per domain or 10% of the gross profits. But here’s the kicker: the article quotes Dot Vegas’ CEO estimating that 300,000-500,000 domains will be registered in the first year.
Now, I haven’t seen the business plans for other city top level domain names, but I have to guess this estimate is on the high side. Las Vegas has some things going for it, such as the potential for gambling sites hosted on .vegas (the city council will just love that), but my guess would be more like 10,000 domains registered in the first year.
The only data we have to work from are recent global top level domain releases. Numbers for .asia, .tel, and .mobi (which had huge marketing budgets) make Dot Vegas’ numbers look unrealistic.
Let’s help the city council out. How many domains do you think will be registered in the first year?
Tim Davids says
5000 by the people running .vegas and those would be the only good ones of course…50,000 by domainers
Would love to have been at the meeting where they came up with 500,000.
David J Castello says
Along with dotNYC, dotVEGAS is one of those concentrate brands that has a shot at survival (and will be a goldmine for the owners of NYC.com and Vegas.com).
However, a lot depends on how many of these vanity gTLDs are released at the same time. Currently, speculators can fixate on dotME and then dotCM, etc as each promotes itself in a timely mannner. But release a tsunami of these names and the pie is cut to a micro-fraction. I know, I know – the people in Las Vegas and NYC are supposed to be the main market for these names, but the people in both cities are wildly overestimating how many of these are going to be actually bought and developed by locals.
Ace says
I would ask, how many business entities are there in Vegas. I would also ask, how many of those entities are in the hospitality domain. Finally I would take that number and divide by 4. That’s the ballpark registrations we can expect for this .VEGAS domain in the first year
David J Castello says
PS:
If the CEO of dotVEGAS really believes that there will be 300,000-500,000 registrations in the first year, then the city should insist they get 90% of all revenue on the first 100,000 registrations and then 10% after. There is no way they should give their blessing on anything less because they have the power here.
M. Menius says
dotVegas are going to have to spend a lot on advertising. If unregulated registrations are allowed, there will be much speculation and grassroots development would proceed slowly. Las Vegas is a good litmus test. 500,000 registrations seems very unlikely … whereas 50,000 seems do-able.
ojohn says
I don’t think that the registration numbers will be that high in the first year, but in the long run they might be able to reach those levels considering that in addition to the local businesses and institutions that obviously have a vested interest in associating their name with their City TLD there might also be a lot of regular people who might get persuaded to register their fist name (or FistName.LastName.CityTLD) which for Cities with larger populations might easily add up to a few hundred thousands. Off course at this stage this is all based more on assumptions and educated guesses than facts, because the City TLDs can’t really be compared to any previous TLDs. I guess you can always start by asking yourself whether or not you are going to register your company name and personal name in your City TLD, if the answer is yes then there are probably going to be hundreds of thousands of other people in the bigger Cities who might consider doing the same thing. I think we all will know more once the first few City TLDs go live, till then it’s a little bit of a gamble, you never know which city TLDs are going to hit the jackpot, but if and when they do the payout is going to be very big. (just my opinion)
Andrew Allemann says
@ojohn – it would be great if ICANN committed to a second round of new gTLDs within a specified timeframe of the first launch. That way people could wait on the sidelines to see how other tlds, such as .nyc, work out. The reason many cities are lining up this time around is because they’re afraid it will be their only chance.
ojohn says
@Andrew – It was my understanding that ICANN had already announced that there were going to be additional rounds after the first round, the only reason that some Cities are rushing to get on the first round is probably because they don’t want to lose their name to others who might have a legitimate interest in the same name (or abbreviation) for other uses.
Andrew Allemann says
@ ojohn – they’ve said they’ll do additional round, but no one believes it will be anytime soon after the first (given how things have gone this time). I think only a few cities would fall into the category you’re saying — they would easily object to an application for .vegas for something else.
SL says
They’ll easily do 500k…1k to the locals and 499k to you filthy, disgusting, lawless domainers.
Overall gtlds seem so limited in application. It’s easy to see hotels.vegas getting some solid direct navigation after a while. Same with lots of SIC code categories like plumbers, etc. It could reach into the general psyche in a way that .biz or .info didn’t. Solely because of the geo component.
To total 500k, that means they’re purely guessing based on a sufficient combination of dictionary, long tails and proper names to apply within a particular geo region.
DavesCarSales.vegas works ok.
Sally.vegas works for vanity, but probably not many first+last names.
Acne.vegas works for a dermatologist but that’s limited to the 50-100(wag) that practice there.
Dictionaries like oscillate.vegas don’t work at all but lots of premium combos like carinsurance.vegas do.
Dunno, 100k?
Of course the true test will be how Google treats these extensions in their index.
ojohn says
@Andrew – Technically Las Vegas NM has as much rights to get .Vegas in the first round if it is not challenged by Las Vegas NV, and a Company using the N Y C abbreviation also can end up with .NYC if New York City doesn’t show an expression of interest for the name. Considering what happened when .com was originally introduced when so many Cities missed out on the opportunity to get their name on time I don’t think that they are going to take any chances this time around. IMO
Andrew Allemann says
@ ojohn – I see your point. There are certainly some cities that could get gamed, notably NYC. Vegas would be a little harder, but absolutely possible.
Incidentally, GAC tried (not sure what has happened to this idea) to give special protection to capitals, such as Paris.
L.F. says
In my opinion .VEGAS could reach 500.000 or more easily if the domain will be set up in a similar way as “.tel” is, or each registration will come with a preset (personal)webpage that can be easily managed even from a cellphone and can be used to show for ex. photos of the last visit and if the TLD will be totally unrestricted.
It is hard to speculate without knowing the business plan behind the domain, but imagine if each hotel will give to their guests a domain name and a website where photos of the visit could be uploaded by using a mobile phone. Would you upload your Vegas photos from TRAFFIC Las Vegas to your FirstnameLastname.VEGAS website?
Not everything that happens in Vegas should stay in Vegas or on your cellphone. 🙂
Andrew Allemann says
“but imagine if each hotel will give to their guests a domain name and a website where photos of the visit could be uploaded by using a mobile phone. Would you upload your Vegas photos from TRAFFIC Las Vegas to your FirstnameLastname.VEGAS website?”
it’s called Facebook 🙂
Tell is at about 275k registrations, with a LOT of money behind the launch
bogus says
You guys really think this extension has a shot? REALLY? After how many of you got dupped on .mobi, .info, .biz purchases? Do you think we are going to see national tv advertising for even hotels.vegas? And if that does happen you don’t think it will be by HOTELS.COM?? C’mon you guys, stop thinking this is the next big gTLD. It’s either .com or bust, it has always been like this and it will not change for a very long time. The only people that will make money are the people behind the gTLD that bleed you dry!
Kieren McCarthy says
Re: number of domains they’ll sell – depends entirely on the model they use to provide them.
I suspect they’ll resort to the usual dot-com model, in which case there is no way they’ll do 300,000. I would guesstimate 30,000-50,000 depending on how much they promote it.
But then who knows? With lots of extensions going live, a larger part of society might start buying domains.
Kieren
ojohn says
“There are certainly some cities that could get gamed, notably NYC.”
@Andrew – It seems that ICANN has put multiple levels of safeguards in place to prevent the City TLDs from being gamed by those who don’t have a legitimate interest in the names, but if other companies that have been using the N Y C abbreviation apply for .NYC it doesn’t mean that they are gaming the City name, some of them probably have legitimate interest in this name and they might be able to get .NYC if New York City does not participate in the first round. So I don’t think this is as much about worrying about those who might want to game this process as it is about being able to compete with all those other entities that have a legitimate interest in the same name. That’s why it’s important to participate in the first round which I believe is going to require submitting an expression of interest. (just my opinion)
Dutch Boyd says
Maybe I’m in the minority here… but I don’t think they could reach those numbers if they were GIVING them away for free, let alone selling them.
I’m going to eduguesstimate(tm) that there are only about 32,000 dotCom domain names with the word “Vegas” in it. I think dotVegas could probably sell about 1% of that number in the first year… so 320 dotVegas domain registrations would be my estimate.
If they give them away for free kind of like dotMP is doing, I could see the extension taking off for locals and maybe getting your 10,000 estimate…
But 300k-500k registrations is just laughable. Thanks for bringing this to our attention… plan on contacting some of my city counsel members.
Andrew Allemann says
Maybe the biz opp for .vegas is to have a hefty price tag on sunrise period, and then tell all of the local casinos “you have to get yourcasino.vegas during sunrise for $$$”
mike says
what a waste of time and money. it will flop. domains are still foreign to a lot of people. just go into borders or barnes n noble. how many books about domains are there? zero.
.com is king
Tan Tran says
I just got back from Vegas. I have to tell you this city is a marvel on a grander scale then anything that people normally can imagine.
They like to THINK BIG.
I wouldn’t throw it by them to figure out a way to get 500,000k registrations.
TAG says
First year 50k my guess
Dave Ruth says
International City like no other. ebusiness.vegas coming soon.