.Club Domains, LLC announced today they have won the rights to the new generic top level domain (gTLD) name .CLUB
The .CLUB name was obtained in the first private auction to be completed since ICANN began the new gTLD process.
The other applicants for .Club that participated in the private auction was Donuts and the Merchant Law Group LLP.
This appears to be the second new gTLD private auction that Donuts has lost.
The company also announced that it has exercised its option to complete a $7 million funding round, paving the way for .Club’s CEO Colin Campbell, the founder of Tucows and Hostopia, to bring his experience building and growing successful technology and Internet companies to this next frontier of Internet domains.
“We are thrilled to have won the first gTLD private auction and now be in a position to ensure that .CLUB is one of the first new generic domain names to come to market worldwide,” said Campbell. “We believe that very few new domain names carry the inherent marketing message and global recognition that the name ‘club’ represents. What .COM has done for companies, .CLUB will do for membership organizations of all sizes.” Campbell noted that .CLUB has consistently been among the top 20 new generic TLD’s across numerous pre-registration sites.
With the auction for the name now complete, subject to ICANN application approval, .CLUB will be among the first new generic TLD’s to come to market.
Domains like www.golf.club, www.poker.club, and www.book.club should hit the market in late 2013 or early 2014.
In addition to acting as the worldwide .CLUB registry, the company has plans to offer .CLUB domain name registrants a web and mobile social platform designed specifically for member engagement and management, making it easy for clubs of any kind to establish themselves on the internet.
“I created .Club Domains with the vision to help bring together people who have similar ideas, hobbies, or interests and create the easiest way to find, join or start a club on the internet,” added Campbell. “Names with the .CLUB extension will allow any kind of affinity group, hobbyists, sports enthusiasts and more to easily find or create a site where like-minded people can come together, get information and share interests.”
Campbell, the founder of Tucows and Hostopia, is a Toronto-born serial entrepreneur based in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Typical over the top press release.
“IN HISTORIC FIRST PRIVATE AUCTION”
Yeah, what a historic event. This private auction will rank near the moon landing as a pinnacle of human innovation and achievement. I am sure they will teach about this event in all the future textbooks 🙂
“.CLUB will be among the first new generic TLD’s to come to market.”
Not exactly. Priority draw #1046.
“What .COM has done for companies, .CLUB will do for membership organizations of all sizes.”
.ORG has already done that for organizations of all sizes.
“Domains like http://www.golf.club, http://www.poker.club, and http://www.book.club should hit the market in late 2013 or early 2014.”
When you actually see those domains written down, they don’t look all that impressive.
One poised to fail in my book…
(…as very little interest)
Most Clubs already have their own .com or even .org
How many ******club.com do we have? Any bean counters?
>>How many ******club.com do we have? Any bean counters?<<
A surprisingly huge amount: about 118,000 according to domaintools in com/net/org/info/biz/us and not including ccTLDs.
http://www.domaintools.com/buy/domain-search/?q=club&bc=63&bh=A&order=right&pool=A&filter=y&search_type=&rows=100&de_search=Search
Will be very interesting to see how many of those drop their existing web addresses and use just .club, how many redirect .club to their existing address, and how many redirect their existing address to .club.
Same goes for all of the other new TLDs of course.
short TLD. Anyone know where it ranks on the pre-registration sites ?
Jenn
.Club is number 20 on United Domains top 50 list