$30,000 a year for a domain name registration?

We’ve seen some sky-high prices for domain name registrations in new top level domain names. .Rich for about $2,500 a year comes to mind.

But that’s nothing compared to the price for .Spreadbetting.

IG subsidiary Boston Ivy wanted to keep this domain name for its own use. But ICANN cracked down on “single registrant generics”, and the company was forced to offer .spreadbetting domain names to its competitors.

There’s a bit of a loophole in the single registrant rules, however. Registrars can charge whatever they want for new domain name registrations, and they can set a sky-high price for registrations to effectively restrict a domain name to its own company.

.Spreadbetting went into general availability last week. 101Domain is charging a whopping $30,000 standard registration fee, which I believe is the most expensive yet for registrations under a new TLD. Click here to continue reading…