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Frank Schilling new TLD auction grosses more than $40 millon

by — Domain Sales 25 Comments

All 23 top level domains sold in auction last week.

The words "domain name auction" overlayed on photo of auctioneer gavel

Frank Schilling’s UNR business sold 23 top level domains in auctions last week, grossing more than $40 million.

The company says that 17 bidders deposited money to participate in the auctions, and more than 10 different bidders won the top level domains. Six of the winning bidders are new to the space and will be operating a new top level domain for the first time.

While identities of the winners have not been disclosed, the company says that established registries, investment firms, blockchain companies, and high net-worth individuals won auctions.

All 23 domains in the auction sold:

.audio, .blackfriday, .christmas, .click, .country, .diet, .flowers, .game, .guitars, .help, .hiphop, .hiv, .hosting, .juegos, .link, .llp, .lol, .mom, .photo, .pics, .property, .sexy, .tattoo

Auctions started at prices between $0 and $2 million and none of the domains had reserves.

Frank Schilling’s top level domain auction begins today

by — Domain Sales 22 Comments

Domain investor hopes to sell 23 top level domains.

Hands holding bid cards in auction

A three-day auction for Frank Schilling’s new top level domain names begins today.

Schilling’s UNR is auctioning 23 strings without reserves (but with varying starting bids). The domains being auctioned are:

.audio, .blackfriday, .christmas, .click, .country, .diet, .flowers, .game, .guitars, .help, .hiphop, .hiv, .hosting, .juegos, .link, .llp, .lol, .mom, .photo, .pics, .property, .sexy, .tattoo

UNR has lowered the starting bids on many of the domains since it first announced the auction. The price of .link had the biggest nominal price cut from $3 million to $2 million. The .link namespace lost over 15% of its domains under management in a single day this week.

The most obvious bidders for the assets include GoDaddy Registry and Donuts. GoDaddy Registry is acquiring 30 top level domains in deals announced earlier this month and Donuts acquired rival registry Afilias at the end of 2020. [Update: and XYZ, which has already bought some of Schilling’s domains.]

GoDaddy did not acquire Schilling’s top level domain business when it acquired his portfolio and domain name registrar last year, but that was before GoDaddy entered the registry business by acquiring Neustar’s registry business.

Listen to a podcast with Frank Schilling explaining why he is selling the domains.

Catching up with Frank Schilling – DNW Podcast #324

by — Podcasts 3 Comments

The legendary domain name investor reflects on new top level domains and talks about his upcoming sale of 23 strings.

Picture of domain investor Frank Schilling with the words "Domain Name Wire Podcast #324 Catching up with Frank Schilling"

Frank Schilling is exiting the top level domain business in a big way: he’s auctioning off his 23 top level domains on April 28 in what is sure to be an interesting event. On today’s show, Frank explains what’s behind the sale, what he got right (and what he didn’t) about new top level domains, and what his plans are for the future.

Also: GoDaddy closeouts, Super Bowl ad, and last month’s top stories

Sponsor: Sav

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Frank Schilling will try to liquidate his 23 top level domain names in a single day

by — Uncategorized 15 Comments

Schilling will exit the new top level domain game if the price is right.

Graphic that states "top level domains" on a white circle inside a blue background

Frank Schilling’s top level domain registry UNR is planning to liquidate its TLDs in no-reserve auctions held on a single day.

The company currently has rights to 23 top level domain and will auction each of them for no reserve on April 28, 2021.

No reserve doesn’t mean the TLDs will sell for just a buck, though. .HIV, .juegos, and .llp  will start a $0, but the other domains will have minimum bids ranging from $150,000 to $3 million.

While the company may end up selling off its top level domains, it’s not exiting the domain name business entirely. It plans to focus solely on its backend registry services and IP protection services.

In fact, it’s offering its “Registry in a Box” service to buyers of its top level domains if they’d like. It will even serve as a “Trustee” for any of the top level domains, meaning UNR will be the named owner and continue to operate the domains on behalf of the financial buyer.

UNR will use Innovative Auctions to handle the sale. Innovative Auctions handled the recent sale of .car, cars and .auto and was the auction service for many TLD resolution sets.

The unique auction should give us a good idea about the current valuation of top level domains.

UNR acquires .Trust and .LLP top level domains

by — Uncategorized 0 Comments

Company now runs 25 top level domains.

Graphic that states "top level domains" on a white circle inside a blue background

Frank Schilling’s top level domain registry UNR has added two domain names to its stable: .Trust and .LLP.

This is the third home for .Trust, as Kevin Murphy reported last week. UNR says that MarkMonitor, CSC and Safenames are currently accepting pre-orders for .Trust domains.

The .LLP transaction was finalized in April, according to ICANN records. DotRegistry, LLC was the seller.

.LLP is a “corporate identifier” domain similar to .LLC and .Inc.

These domains have seen mixed results. .Ltd leads the pack with over 100,000 registrations. Over half of these are at Alibaba, and price seems to be a significant factor with first-year registrations at about $7. .Llc has 17,000 names in the zone. .Inc, which costs over $2,000 per year to register, has about 3,200 names in the zone.

Some corporate identifiers have restrictions, and my understanding is .LLP is currently set up to be restricted.

After divesting its share of .car, .cars and .auto, the two acquisitions bring UNR’s portfolio up to 25 names. There are 250,000 domains registered across its namespaces.

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