It’s not secret that I am a big New England Patriots fan. Obviously, that makes me a Rob Gronkowski fan, too. Any time I can write a domain industry article that mentions one of my favorite players (and one of the best players in the entire NFL), you better believe I will.
It was just announced that Rob Gronkowski will be on the cover of the popular Madden 17 football game. In fact, Rob mentioned this honor via his Twitter account yesterday evening:
It’s Official! What an honor it is to be the cover of @EAMaddenNFL https://t.co/FkCzLRxGVs pic.twitter.com/QStEWuOvIi
— Rob Gronkowski (@RobGronkowski) May 12, 2016
As someone in the domain space, what I immediately noticed was his usage of GronkNation.news in that tweet. Unlike many others who are using new gTLD and ccTLD domain names as url shorteners, Rob is actually using his GronkNation.news domain name for a website filled with Gronk-related news. The family also uses GronkNation.com for its primary website, but GronkNation.News seems to be only used for news related articles and information.
In looking through Rob’s Twitter feed, it looks like he has been using this .news domain name since May 2. The domain name is privately registered, and it has been registered since April 20th.
I asked Rightside’s Matt Overman about this, and he told me that Rob is not a paid or compensated endorser for using this .News domain name. Rightside operates the .News new gTLD registry.
Update: I reached out to find out more about Rob’s usage of this .News domain name, and Dan Gronkowski shared the following with me:
The reason we went with .news is because we were looking to make a news blog with all Gronks news that was free standing. I noticed that people were using different domains on the right side and thought this would be the perfect opportunity. It is different but practical and we want people to know that his isn’t totally just a blog but more news stories about Gronk.
Gonk is one of the biggest crybabies in the NFL, ask any NFL referee, and your a fan of his? Well at least we didn’t see him do a Cam Newton after the championship game against the Broncos, I loved that game! 🙂