What Is The Domain Market Worth? Ex-ICANN Chairman Peter Dengate Thrush Says Its “Worth $12 Billion”
2011 August 17
Peter Dengate Thrush former Chairman of the Board of ICANN told reporters today that the “current domain name market is worth about $12 Billion Dollars”.
“We think it will expand by some $3-4bn with the new gTLDs.” Mr. Thrush told a reporter for cityam.com
So what do you think of Mr. Thrushes estimate of the value of the domain name market?
High, low or just about right?
Loading ...
my “BullS’ is already worth more than 15 trillions….
worth to who?
the registrars? icann? wipo? real businesses sitting on multi-million domain names? investors with domain portfolios worth hundreds of millions? like reflex, schilling, accommodation, national a1? etc etc.
impossible to put a price, certainly without stating which segment he is talking about. only a fool would try. oh, i see former icann man.
enough said
how can the whole domain aftermarket be worth $12 bln if only MHB’s .coms are worth several blns?
I don’t know about the base number of 12B, maybe right but where is this number coming from.
What I do like is how he believes that exponentially increasing the space with new tlds will only increase the value of te space by like 30%. That actually seems reasonable.
if only Verisign and GoDaddy are valued a total of $7.5 billion, the world domain market may worth $30 billion or more
m.ogle: that does not make any sense. The sales prices of those companies do not reflect the value of the domain market. Business valuation is tricky, multiples involved, other assets, you name it.
It’s ridiculous. The domain market is worth trillions.
In order to establish the value of the domain market one would first need to define what the domain market is. Does the market include new registartions, renewals, aftermarket sales?
Regardless, hard to establish value in a market that has next to no liquiditiy
I am not an economist, but I believe that there is a difference between the “ domain market “ and the “ domain economy “.
Domain market probably is more about the domains that are for sale, total number of those domains, their average prices, and their combined values.
But when you start talking about the total assets that are being held by domain companies, individual investors, and developed websites that starts to fall more under the “ domain economy “ as a whole.
-
“The domain market is worth trillions.”
this is true if we consider, that, big companies like Google, Yahoo, Amazon, eBay, etc. (simply) can’t exist without the web, then “without a domain”
also, we must add in the “domain market value” also the value of all top domains owned by web and non-web companies (google.com, microsoft.com, apple.com etc.) that (clearly) are domain market’s assets
Its like when we talk about the housing market are we referring to all the houses that are in existence or only the houses that are for sale.
-
If the domain market is worth $12B to $1TR, then what is the technology that eventually moves us beyond the need for domains worth? I’d love to be the father of that idea!
But I would need some heavy security detail!
“I’d love to be the father of that idea!”
if so,you’ll be very lucky, since, that “father” owns a $70+ billion company…
I think he meant the primary market, which is probably worth what he says it is.
The secondary market, once you account for the inflated prices people think their domains are worth (including me), would probably be in the trillions.
Not that $12 billion is to be sneezed at, not the $3-$4 billion that will be ‘spent’ on regs in the new gTLDs.
Sizing the “market” with an agreed set of dimensions and assumptions would be a useful way to establish a way to measure it. If purely a matter of registrations, renewals, domains that are “active” (meaning they serve content or resolve), that should be a baseline in “domain speak”…Would also be interesting to see how many new gTLDs redirect to .com and/or others.
But new gTLDs, particularly generic terms, should open up new business models and monetization which may be challenging to measure on standardized basis since models will be variant. Would be interesting to see percentage of brand TLDs by industry sector.
A composite auction values model also could be interesting since it’s so fragmented.
ICANN should partner with a market research firm and establish a Nielsen-like approach to this, and publicize results quarterly like Verisign does.
Yeah, KoolDomaining.com for everybody:)
Anyway we can short the domain market ?
Only priced domains at Sedo is worth about $60 Billion Dollars
seriously i will repeat my self MHB’s dot com’s are worth several billions , thre is no way, the domain markte is worth $12 bln. Aftermarket is more like 12 trillions accouting CCTLDS too
makes some sense.
If VRSN, and Godaddy are considered half the market.
It doesnt matter what the break up value of MHB’s domains or NameAdmin’s domains are worth to end user. Its what the fair market value of their companies is today based on EBITDA and some assets value formula.
Better question would be, what is the total value of registrar/registry industry.
And how much revenue do registrars/registries generate per year.