Daily Poll

Sports betting has been legal in a very limited number of jurisdictions in the United States, including Nevada. Yesterday, the US Supreme Court struck down a federal law banning sports betting outside of specific jurisdictions, and this should open up sports betting in areas throughout the US.

I believe a few states will allows sports betting in the short term, and other states will follow.

Now that sports betting will likely be more widespread across the US, I am curious if you think sports betting related domain names will become popular in the same way marijuana related domain names were popular? Participate in the poll below:

Late last week, NamesCon announced its intention to hold its last conference at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas in 2019:

We’re looking for a new location for #NamesCon Global! Our 2019 conference will the final one held at the Tropicana Las Vegas. More on this update: https://t.co/erw586EpZp pic.twitter.com/Th2MaAM3FA

— NamesCon (@NamesCon) May 10, 2018

NamesCon invited people to offer suggestions on where the 2020 conference will be held. They shared one thought about the location: “we’re looking to be leaving Las Vegas, and we’d love to sink our feet into a sandy beach somewhere…”

I put together a list of options for you to vote on. I considered the beach and warm weather suggestion, but I included other options as well. I left Florida cities off the list because I assume organizers wouldn’t do a conference in the same area as the Merge conference. I also left New York City off the list because of the NameSummit conference. I only included US cities with the assumption that this annual conference will stay in the US. If you don’t like any of my suggestions, feel free to choose “other” and write your selection in the comment section.

Where would you like to see NamesCon 2020? Vote in the poll below and/or share your thoughts in the comment section:

One area in the domain investment space I know very little about is IDN domain names. I have never owned an IDN domain name, and I don’t really see that changing. I know there is (or at least was) an active community focused on IDN domain investments, but I haven’t followed that specialized vertical at all.

Do you invest in IDN domain names?

I can’t even tell you the number of times I have heard people say something to the effect of ‘.App is the new .Mobi.’ The line of thinking, I assume, is that some people billed .mobi as the next big thing and a game changer, citing Google’s support of the .mobi registry. I think we all know what happened with .mobi domain names, which I hardly see anymore and certainly can’t recall seeing them used regularly.

Google operates the .App registry, and some people see this as a positive sign for the health and life of .App domain names. I have mixed feelings about this primarily because Google has always said the extension doesn’t really matter all that much and it would be strange to see them giving better rankings to websites that use a .App domain name. There is a push for SSL on websites, and all .App domain names are given SSLs, but if two competing apps have SSLs and one is on ExampleApp.com and the other uses Example.App, I don’t know if Google will give better treatment to the .App and potentially influence the value of having a .App domain name.

The aftermarket value of .App domain names is also another story, and that really remains to be seen as

OnlineDomain.com is one of my daily reads. Konstantinos is not afraid to share his opinions about domain industry topics, and I respect that about him, even if I don’t always agree with his opinions.

Yesterday, K wrote about the cancelation of one of the .NYC auctions due to its sale. If I understand correctly, it looks like the .NYC registry (an advertiser here for full disclosure) pulled the BroadwayTickets.NYC auction on Sedo because it privately sold the domain name for $25,000. When the auction was pulled, there were no bidders.

Update: I did not understand what transpired. I was informed by Neustar that the “domain name never went into auction” and therefore it was not pulled from auction. The company sold the domain name prior to the auction’s start, and they announced the sale on their ownit.nyc blog.

From what I gather, it looks like Konstantinos is calling into question the decision to pull a domain name from an auction because there may have been bidders waiting to place a bid at the final moments. This decision may have been unfair to prospective bidders.

In this particular situation, I

The .NYC registry (operated by Neustar and advertising on this website) is hosting an auction of travel-related .NYC domain names. The auction is being held on Sedo and there are a couple of days remaining in the auction.

There are 24 domain names up for auction, and the auctions have reserve prices of $500 (I am not sure the annual renewal fees for these domain names). It looks like 9 auctions have $500 bids, which met the reserve.

I am not eligible to own .NYC domain names, but I chose what I think are my five favorite names in the list. What domain name is your favorite?