Fate of new TLD order determined by click of a button and location

ICANN reveals more details about its digital archery game.

The smart money would have set up their registry in Africa…

ICANN has provided more details about its so-called digital archery solution that will determine in which batch a new TLD application will be evaluated.

Digital archery involves setting a target time and then clicking a button as close to the target time as possible.

With close to 2,000 applications, but many of them duplicates, we’re probably looking at 2-3 total batches.

The good news for people applying for hotly contested domains is that they’ll be grouped in with the applicant for the same string that does best in digital archery. So if one applicant for .app gets into the first batch, all other .app applicants will be moved up to the first batch.

This disturbed some .brand applicants who thought this would push them into later batches. But ICANN said this is not the case; no one will be pushed to a later round because of contention move-ups. That means the first batch will have more than 500 strings.

But the catch is that batches will also take into consideration which region the applicant calls home: Africa, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Latin America/Caribbean and North America. There will be a round robin approach.

Although I don’t know the exact break down, I’m guessing being in the U.S. or Europe will put you at a disadvantage. I believe Donuts, which is applying for 307, is based in the U.S. TLDH, applying for 68 on its own, is in Europe. Most .brand applicants likely also come from these regions. (By the way, good luck finding a list of countries in each region on ICANN’s web site.)

Oh, and the digital archery process will be run through the trusty TAS system.

Given the high stakes and perceived advantage of getting in to the first batch, don’t be shocked if a lawsuit is filed after the results come in.