It is often said that every business project comes with its fair share of uncertainty. That is precisely why executives and project owners surround themselves with professionals, steering tools and planning methodologies: to reduce that uncertainty as much as possible. Keeping the unexpected under control means gaining better command of timelines, schedules and budgets. This is particularly important in IT projects, which have a rather well-earned reputation for slipping beyond their original scope, timeframe, or cost assumptions.

Against this back drop, one question naturally arises: have the applicants preparing new TLD projects for the 2026 round really factored in all the parameters needed to keep their trajectory under control?

At first glance, one might be tempted to think so, particularly when looking at the so-called “portfolio applicants” that have already made their intentions public. They have analyzed the strings likely to attract demand and deployed a volume-based strategy, following the path first opened by Donuts during the previous round.

Buying in Bulk to Improve Margins

ICANN does not offer a group discount on application fees. However, several fixed costs, including management, operational and backend costs, can be significantly pooled when an applicant is carrying five, ten, or even three hundred TLDs.

That approach does, however, come with a trade-off: it increases the risk of ending up in contention with other applicants targeting the same strings.

But they have planned for this. With the right organization, some projects may be abandoned, arbitrated or even exchanged with other portfolio applicants. If the rules says that applicants are not allowed to talk to each other after Reveal Day, when the applied-for TLDs are officially published? So be it. They therefore have every incentive to talk beforehand, not least by publishing their own lists; and they have. Which means after the poker game of the first public announcements, we are almost moving into Pokémon card territory: trading, assessing, speculating.

At this stage, there are eleven applicants of this kind, each carrying more than eight applications, including two that have around 300 applications a piece. These applicants represent nearly 880 TLDs in total, or more than half of the identified applications. Almost a hundred strings already appear to overlap, which gives a fair indication of the scale of the battle ahead between portfolio applicants. The big unknown is how many of them will actually go all the way, and whether other operators are still waiting in the wings before revealing substantial portfolios of their own.

The First Mover Advantage

These strategies operate in the grey areas at the edge of the Applicant Guidebook. But they also raise a crucial point: once applications have cleared administrative validation and contentions have been resolved, who gets to launch first?

This issue is particularly visible for TLDs linked to artificial intelligence. Given the current climate, their presence is hardly surprising, but for these extensions, the first-mover advantage could prove decisive in terms of adoption and visibility.

This is where the ICANN process becomes rather more surprising: in order to prioritize launches, evaluations must first be prioritized. The TLD assessed first by the evaluators should, unless there is a specific issue with its file, be ready earlier than the others. For dotBrands, speed to market is generally less critical. For generic TLDs, however, occupying the market quickly can make all the difference, especially while the distribution channel — the registrars — is not yet saturated with implementations.

A Lottery to Determine Launch Priority

To determine the order in which applications will be processed, ICANN plans to use the same system as in 2012: a lottery.

At this stage, it appears that the raffle ticket will have to be purchased physically in California. The exact arrangements will only be known 30 days before the draw, leaving a considerable amount of uncertainty on the table.

In short, the order in which applications will be evaluated will depend on a raffle ticket purchased from ICANN. This brings us dangerously close to a CFO’s nightmare: “Can we say when we will start generating revenue?”, to which the project manager replies: “Depending on the draw.”

The good news is that participation in the draw is not mandatory for applicants who are in no particular hurry. For the others, all the meetings, scoping sessions and preparatory work will still matter, but the launch date will depend on a winning ticket. That ticket, incidentally, will not be transferable, as ICANN have decided to prevent a secondary market for winning tickets.

When Will the First Revenues Arrive?

This mechanism adds an almost vintage touch to a large-scale technical operation. Since the teams that spent ten years working on the Applicant Guidebook have apparently not found a more impartial solution to offer, this element of chance will simply have to be accepted.

But maybe it’s fine to leave a little irrationality in a very IT-driven world. Given the number of TLDs requested and the probable contentions, each portfolio applicant should be able to launch at least a few extensions relatively quickly. Not necessarily the most bankable ones, of course, but operations will be able to begin.

Still, some investors may not yet have fully realized that the first launches are unlikely to take place before the end of 2027, and that revenues they expected right after the application window will arrive even later. On the other hand, resellers and registrars now know they have more time for their implementation roadmap.

Of course, how we go about implementing endless numbers of TLDs will be the focus of a future article.

Share article