ICANN says new top level domain applications will be $227,000

Applicants learn how much they’ll have to pay for new TLDs.

Today, ICANN announced the fee it expects to charge applicants in the next round of new top level domain names: $227,000.

This is more than the last round in 2012, when applications cost $185,000.

The organization believes this is the cost necessary for the program to be self-funding:

…to determine the fee, the cost of the entire program was taken into account, including the elements associated with receiving and processing applications, gTLD delegation, communications campaigns, onboarding of evaluation panels and vendors, payment of software licenses, contract execution, and pre-delegation checks. The fee also includes contingency and risk costs for unforeseen and unplanned expenses that occur due to unknown factors or hard-to-predict costs. This could include legal fees and litigation, and variations in vendor pricing estimates…

Of course, I don’t believe ICANN used up all of the money from the “risk” costs during the last round. And with it looking like contention sets will mostly be settled through auctions in which ICANN collects the proceeds, I imagine applicants will ask if some of this money can be returned to applicants through application fee rebates.

For most applicants, particularly those applying for one or two strings, the legal, marketing, and technical costs will far outweigh the application fee.