News from 2018

CentralNic buys .fans for peanuts

Source: Domain Incite, October 8, 2018. http://domainincite.com/23552-centralnic-buys-fans-for-peanuts

CentralNic has acquired the flailing new gTLD .fans for an undisclosed sum

The value of the deal was low enough that publicly traded CentralNic was not obliged to disclose the purchase to the market, CEO Ben Crawford confirmed.

The ICANN contract seems to have changed hands — transferred to a CentralNic subsidiary call Fans TLD Ltd — back in August.

We revealed back in May that CentralNic was acting as a caretaker for .fans, and sister TLD .fan, after original registry Asiamix Digital failed to make enough money to keep the business going.

.fan, which Asiamix bought from Donuts but never launched, was sold back to Donuts in June.

Donuts took .fan to sunrise last week and plans to take it to general availability in December.

.fans domains, meanwhile, have been in registrar storefronts since 2015, but the current tally of registered domains is barely above 1,600.

Domains are still selling for around the $100 mark, roughly double the expected retail price of .fan.