GoDaddy Registry Agrees to Acquire .Club, .Design and Minds + Machines TLDs to Offer More Choice and Value in Digital Name Options

Also wins contracts to support the .ally extension for Ally Financial and the .basketball and .rugby top-level domains

GoDaddy Registry, one of the world’s largest domain registry providers, today announced that it is acquiring the .club and .design domain extensions, as well as 28 domain extensions (and certain other business assets) owned and operated by Minds + Machines Group Limited (MMX). GoDaddy Registry, wholly-owned subsidiary of GoDaddy Inc, was also awarded the contracts to help manage the generic domain extensions .basketball and .rugby, as well as Ally Financial’s branded .ally domain.

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“GoDaddy Registry is committed to making more meaningful, memorable domain extensions available to all registrars, so their customers can find the perfect domain names for their business, brand or big idea,” said GoDaddy Registry Vice President and General Manager, Nicolai Bezsonoff. “All three acquisitions support our growth strategy in unique ways by expanding our portfolio of generic, geo-targeted, and vertically-focused top-level domains.”

• .Club is one of the most popular generic domains, used every day by hundreds of thousands of businesses, groups, clubs and associations around the world. .Club is the ideal domain for the social world we live in, bringing people and customers together to share common interests and to build passionate communities online and off.
• .Design is the premier domain extension for professional and aspiring designers, from web and UX design, to interior design, to other design disciplines. Already in use by many of the world’s leading design departments, brands and studios, .design is the go-to domain of choice for the global design community.
• The MMX portfolio of 28 globally relevant, descriptive domain extensions will ensure that anyone looking for that “just right” domain name will find it. There are location-based domain names customers can use to align themselves with major cities, like .miami, .boston and .bayern; and there are versatile lifestyle, business and niche-related domains — like .vip, .fashion, .yoga and .cooking — that provide customers with meaningful, memorable domain branding options.

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Terms of the deals for .club and .design were not disclosed. GoDaddy Registry is acquiring the relevant assets of MMX for $120 million (subject to customary adjustments). Completion of each of the acquisitions is subject to the satisfaction or waiver of certain conditions precedent, and, in the case of the MMX transaction, MMX shareholder approval and consent of certain geographic and commercial partners and licensors.

In addition to these acquisitions, GoDaddy Registry was recently chosen by the ROAR leadership team to support the market launch of .basketball and .rugby. Ally Financial, a leading digital financial services company, also recently chose GoDaddy Registry to support their branded Top Level Domain; .ally. GoDaddy Registry is excited to partner with these new clients and to support their success.

Upon close of the acquisitions, GoDaddy Registry will own, manage or operate more than 240 top-level domain extensions, with more than 14 million domain names under management.

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