Hills and Ladbrokes apply for personalised domains
Hills looks to secure dot.williamhill handle, while Lads bids for dot.bet and dot.ladbrokes domains.
William Hill, Ladbrokes are the only two leading egaming operators to apply for generic top-level domains (gTLDs) after the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) released the full list of applicants yesterday.
Hills have applied for use of the dot.williamhill domain, while Ladbrokes have submitted requests for the dot.ladbrokes and dot.bet handles. A number of smaller companies, including US-based companies dot Bet Ltd and Foggy Way, LLC and Irish firm Afilias Ltd, which has also applied for the dot.casino and dot.poker domains. Genting, meanwhile, have applied for the dot.genting domain.
IG Group have applied for a number of handles including dot.broker, dot.forex, dot.markets, dot.spreadbetting and dot.trading.
Companies were required to submit their applications for use of the gTLDs to ICANN by Thursday 12 April, though it is unclear when official confirmation of the awards will be announced. ICANN received a total of 1930 applications with the majority “ 911 “ coming from North America.
Campbell Newell of intellectual property law firm Marks and Clerk, LLP commented that the high number of applications proved that there was a clear appetite for gTLDs among leading companies:
“The sheer number of applications “ especially given this is only the first round “ goes to show that the demand for branded or otherwise customised domain names is very much there. It has not been, as some speculated last year, a damp squib.
“As commerce continues to migrate online, and the internet embeds itself into more and more aspects of everyday life, brand and reputation are becoming more important than ever before. So it makes sense for companies and organisations to seize the opportunity to distinguish themselves like this, he explained.