Donuts Announces Acquisition of .Fan Top-Level Domain

Joins World's Largest Portfolio of New Top-Level Domains

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Jun 18, 2018, 03:37 ET

SEATTLE, June 18, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Donuts Inc., the global leader in high-quality, new top-level Internet domains, today announced it has re-acquired the .fan top-level domain (TLD), making it the 241^st TLD in Donuts' portfolio.

"We are excited to add .fan to our portfolio," said John Pollard, executive vice president and general manager of the Donuts registry. "Fans literally wear their allegiances on their sleeves, and a .fan domain name will clearly signal a destination for those who passionately support sports teams, musicians, performers, entertainers and causes."

Fan engagement is a powerful economic driver in sports, e-sports, entertainment, gaming, the arts and other verticals^¹. Social media, new analytics tools and specialized technology are all ways for teams, entertainers, performers, celebrities and their fans to connect. The .fan TLD joins a diverse portfolio of sports and entertainment names that includes: .bike, .football, .bingo, .casino .golf .hockey, .live, .band, soccer, .team, .tennis, .training, .futbol, .dance, .rocks, .events, .movie, .show, .theater, .actor, .dance, and more.

Since .fan is a new release, it will enable registrants to obtain high-quality domain names that have long been unavailable in legacy TLDs, and which are more suitable for search and social media.

In fact, recent research affirms the growing importance of web links that use real words, including new TLDs. In a survey conducted by Sapio Research and commissioned by Donuts, respondents overwhelmingly opted for branded short links using real words, over links containing long strings of characters and / or legacy short links. Reasons for preferring short links using real words included: more meaningful information, clarity of content, identification with the brand, trust and greater simplicity. To learn more about this survey, click here.

.fan names are anticipated to be generally available in mid-September.

About Donuts

Donuts simplifies and connects a fragmented online world with domain names and related technologies that allow people and businesses to build, market and own their digital identities. Donuts holds the world's largest portfolio of new top-level domains, and offers a wide variety of clear and meaningful names for use as business identifiers (such as .ltd, .company), navigation (such as .careers, .support), in vertical markets (such as .photography, .cafe, or .builders) or in broad-based generics (such as .life, .world or .live). Donuts provides its registrar / reseller customers with innovative services for the discovery, registration, usage and monetization of high-quality domain names. A wholly-owned subsidiary of Donuts, the registrar Name.com is one of the most admired brands in the industry. In 2017, Donuts was named Number 1 in the Deloitte Fast 500. Donuts' headquarters are in Kirkland, WA; it has offices in Denver, CO; Austin, Tx; Washington, DC; Dublin, Ireland and Beijing, China.