After peaking in 2011 meeting, Verisign’s sponsorship of ICANN meetings has steadily dropped.
Thinks there’s a lot of bad blood between Verisign and ICANN right now?
That may be why Verisign isn’t sponsoring the Durban meeting at as high of a level as it has sponsored previous meetings.
The Durban meeting offers six sponsorship levels, ranging from Bronze ($7,500) to Diamond ($250,000).
For this meeting, Verisign sponsored at the $15,000 Silver level.
Let’s go back to the March 2011 meeting in Silicon Valley. After sponsoring the previous few conferences at the Gold level, it upped the ante to the highest level with a Diamond sponsorship. It didn’t hurt that this meeting was in Silicon Valley and Bill Clinton was speaking. That probably had a lot to do with the high sponsorship.
It then downgraded one level to Platinum Elite for the June 2011 meeting in Singapore.
For the next four meetings, Verisign dropped its sponsorship to Platinum. During much of that period Verisign was negotiating the renewal of its .com contract.
At 2013’s first meeting in Beijing, Verisign chipped in with just a Gold sponsorship.
Now it’s down to silver.
Of course, many companies that sponsor ICANN meetings are probably feeling a bit strung out these days thanks to delays in the new top level domain program (which Verisign is trying to delay). Sponsorships in Durban, as with Beijing, topped out at Gold.
But Verisign is also in no mood to give more money to ICANN than it needs to.
Leave a Comment