Out Over .Vegas Top Level Domain Name — Fight Breaks
Fight shows complexity of fresh top level domain name process, and a city council that just left money on the table.
“Not so fast”, states a competitor who wants the chance to operate a .Vegas top level domain name.
Dot Vegas Inc. has struck a deal with the City of Las Vegas to launch and operate a .vegas top level domain name when (if) ICANN approves fresh TLDs. It has an optimistic view on how much money it can bring in to the city.
But the owner of Vegas.com wants in on the action, and offered the city more than the 75 cents per domain or 10% that Dot Vegas Inc. is offering to run the registry.
Too late for .Vegas? Well, Vegas.com has an ace up its sleeve. Clark County states the City of Las Vegas shouldn’t have exclusive rights to launch the .Vegas TLD. Following all, The Strip is located outside the city limits, and many people think of The Strip as Vegas. So now Vegas.com is trying to work with the county on a deal to launch the fresh TLD.
ICANN’s current plans for releasing fresh TLDs offer special privileges to governments of cities, states, and countries for TLDs. It makes things really complicated, especially since capitals may get even more special rights. This is one example where the proper authority to approve a location TLD could be in dispute. Following all, the group that “approved” this TLD ought to probably only have rights to approve .LasVegas, not .Vegas.
As stated by an article in The Las Vegas Sun, which is a sister firm of Vegas.com, competitor Dot Vegas Inc. told the Las Vegas City council it needed to act quickly since ICANN was going to require “Expressions of Interest” in fresh TLDs in a week. If Dot Vegas Inc. really stated that, then the city just got snookered.
Here’s my advice to the City of Las Vegas and to Vegas.com, if it’s not too late.
To the city: You’re getting ripped off. You’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars of your time evaluating a proposal that may earn you very little. You ought to be asking for 30%-40% of each registration. You ought to also ask for a guarantee rather than just a percentage of profits.
To Vegas.com: You win either way. If Dot Vegas fails, then you dodged a money trap. If it succeeds, you’ll get a lot of spillover traffic from people typing in Palms.Vegas.COM by mistake.
