.tv is the country code for the tiny island nation of TUVALU. Tuvalu is a Polynesian
island nation located midway between Hawaii and Australia with a tiny
population of less than 10,000 in 2013. Tuvalu owns the ".tv" domain
extension, and receives millions of dollars each year for allowing non-Tuvaluan
companies to have their very own "dot TV" domain name. Unfortunately
the Island is in danger of sinking.
Back
in the mid 80's when countries were being allotted two letter codes for their
identity is when Tuvalu struck gold, it was allotted .tv as cctld. In the 80's
no one had any idea that this was going to be a continuous money shower in the future years to come.
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| VeriSign announced a partnership with Demand Media. Headed by Richard Rosenblatt, the former chairman of networking site MySpace, the firm plans to market popular domain extension .tv as a prime location. |
In
1998, Jason Chapnik a Canadian entrepreneur who was president of Information.ca
approached the Tuvalu government with an idea on how to profit from their
popular country code. However Chapnik was not the only one interested in .tv.
Anton Van Couvering who was the former President of Net Names had been
consulting Tuvalu on how to profit from their country code. Van Couvering
stepped down as a consultant in order to become a bidder for .tv through his
company Net Names.
After
months of negotiation in the fall of 1998 Tuvalu decided to go with Chapnik.
Chapnik started out with a pricing structure that would price .tv much more
than traditional prices for .com/net/org but more reasonable than the current
premium pricing under Verisign. They started out taking $1000 deposits for the
first year with renewals at $500 a year. There was also an auction structure
set up to settle domain disputes or if there was two or more entities that
shared a certain name.
Chapnik
made many promises and gave rather high estimates to the Tuvalu government on
sales of .tv domains. When Chapnik was unable to raise the $50 million upfront
payment to the Tuvalu nation he brought in a white knight to save the deal.
Enter
Idealab, the California incubator came in and Tuvalu agreed to license its
cctld for $1million per quarter adjustable for inflation, with a $50 million
cap over 10 years. Additionally the Tuvalu nation got a 20 % interest in the
company.
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| Popular domain extension DotTv or .tv |
In
August of 2000 Idealab announced the three most expensive sales in .tv history.
Free.tv,China.tv and Net.tv were sold for $100,000 for the first year and an
additional percent for each year following. ChinaGo.com is the registrant of
China.tv and Net.tv and have maintained their registration to the present day.
Free.tv is registered to a Pennsylvania man that also has kept the registration
up to date.
In
another marketing deal Dot Tv gave the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences
the domain emmys.tv for free in exchange for them to promote the site during
their telecast of the EMMYS in Sept of 2000.
During
this time some individuals started to make a big leap into the .tv extension.
The two largest being Thunayan K Al-Ghanim a Kuwaiti businessman who has one of
the largest domain portfolios on the planet. Al-Ghanim through his Future Media
Architects owns suchs gems as Sexy.tv, Mp3.tv,several 1 letter .tv domains such
as s.tv,t.tv,l.tv and z.tv and many more. Another major player Igal Lichtman
also know to many as Mrs Jello/exoticdomains.net/Boogie Productions, owns such
gems as xxx.tv,girls.tv,n.tv,x.tv, fun.tv and many more. One benefit these
early adopters received was cheap premium renewal fees. Al-Ghanim has $50
renewals and Lichtman has $25 renewals. It was not uncommon to be able to
negotiate renewal fees back in the early days especially if you were a big
player in the .tv extension.
On
January 7,2002 IdeaLab sold its Dot Tv International unit for $45 million to
Verisign. The deal was an all cash deal and Verisign at the time stated the
transaction would add less than $1million in sales for the 4th quarter of 2001.
Verisign also said it would add $7 to $10 million in deferred net revenue.
Verisign
took over and started doing business at www.tv where premium registrations
could only take place through Verisign with a minimum two year contract. Non
premium registrations were $50 at www.tv but other registrars such as Go Daddy,
Idotz.net, Moniker and a whole host of others offered 1 year registrations for
as little as $29.99 to as high as $59.99.
The
extension responded in 2007 posting more sales than the previous 3 years
combined. Such names as De.tv, Surface.tv, Six.tv and AuctionNetwork.tv have
all sold for over $20,000. It is also known that the domain ME.tv sold with a
non disclosure we did verify that it was at least xxx,xxx Demand Media being
the buyer.
Highest
reported sales in the secondary market are Travel.tv for $65,000 and Mail.tv for
$35,000 both purchased by Thunayan K AL-Ghanim from the same seller.
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| Sinking Tuvalu Island which owes the popular domain extension DotTv or .tv that made the tiny Island millionaire rich. |
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