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.london launch day biggest yet for new gTLDs, but did it miss targets?

Kevin Murphy, September 10, 2014, 11:09:01 (UTC), Domain Registries

Dot London Domains’ .london had just shy of 35,000 domains in its zone file this morning, after its first partial day of general availability.
That’s an addition of 12,421 domains over yesterday’s number, making .london the 11th most-registered new gTLD.
This makes .london — which in my opinion has had one of the best launch marketing campaigns we’ve seen this year — the most-successful gTLD, in volume terms, after its first GA day.
It has beaten the 33,012 names that .在线 (“.online” in Chinese) and the 31,645 names that .berlin had in their zone files at the end of their respective GA days.
.london domains are not particularly cheap, either. Minds + Machines sells at £30 ($48) a year and Go Daddy (which lists .london at the top of its UK home page today) sells at $59.99.
UK-based Domainmonster, part of Host Europe Group, performed well with a £34.99 ($56) annual fee.
There were 22,547 .london names claimed during the “London Priority Period”, a combined sunrise/landrush phase that gave first dibs on names to trademark owners followed by London residents.
The registry has not broken down the mix between sunrise and landrush, but I believe based on the paltry sunrise performance of every other new gTLD to date that the vast majority were landrush names.
The full priority period queue has not yet been processed — domains with more than one applicant are currently in auction.
Back-end provider Minds + Machines, recently told the markets that it expects about a quarter of landrush/sunrise names to go to auction, so we could be looking at something like 7,500 applications (as opposed to domains) currently in the auction queue.
What this may mean is that .london had roughly 30,000 applications during its priority period, about 20,000 less than it had predicted back in July.
Dot London Domains is closely affiliated with London & Partners, the PR machine for the Mayor of London, so it had resources and access to throw at an effective marketing campaign.

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