18(b) How do you expect that your proposed gTLD will benefit registrants, Internet users, and others?

Prototypical answer:

As stated in our response to Question 18a, the goal of Washington Team Tennis in building the .tennis gTLD is to provide a very important new resource to the worldwide tennis community, facilitating information and establishing a unique identity for tennis online. As owners of the .tennis gTLD, we would offer an intuitive and intelligent alternative for all members of the tennis industry who have been accustomed to .com and .org websites.

In less than five years since its founding, the Washington Team Tennis organization has built a vibrant and enthusiastic community of support for the Washington Kastles team, and has been recognized with a number of awards for its success on and off the court. The same principles that have contributed to the success of the Washington Kastles franchise are applicable in our approach to developing .tennis: providing honest and helpful communication to consumers, partnering with many diverse members of the tennis industry, leveraging creative marketing strategies, developing extensive grassroots support and bringing people together from all walks of life toward a common and mutually enjoyable destination.

The .tennis gTLD would benefit registrants and users alike in creating an exclusive network of tennis websites where players, organizing bodies, equipment manufacturers, tournaments and other entities are exceptionally and uniquely represented.

For registrants, a .tennis domain name would provide a more intuitive and memorable way for individuals and organizations involved in the sport to clarify their affiliation without a lengthy or complicated URL structure. For illustrative purposes, the following examples are based on leading brands and retailers in the tennis industry, with their names replaced by generic terms to respect their privacy.

Instead of utilizing [Brand].com⁄us⁄tennis⁄_⁄N-1z13y9i, [Brand] could capitalize on [Brand].tennis, a memorable URL that can be utilized as a call-to-action mechanism in its advertising and marketing campaigns for tennis products in its product portfolio. A major retailer could utilize [Retailer].tennis instead of [Retailer].com⁄category⁄index.jsp?categoryId=3053442 for campaigns promoting tennis-specific clothing and footwear available through its retail catalog, or on a special micro-site basis. These are just two of thousands of such examples in which the .tennis URL would be of great value to both the domain registrants and the tens of millions of people globally engaging with them.

The benefits of the more memorable and intuitive navigation that would be enabled through the .tennis gTLD also extend to the tennis-minded Internet consumer. For example, a tennis tournament such as the US Open that shares the same name with other sports could utilize USOpen.tennis to more intuitively distinguish the US Open tennis tournament from its professional sports counterparts using the same name, such as golf. Currently, the US Open golf tournamentʹs official website is USOpen.com, while the tennis tournamentʹs official website is USOpen.org. Although perhaps no formal evidence exists, itʹs safe to say that each year, millions of tennis and golf fans enter the wrong address when trying to find the official website of the event they are trying to follow. Much of that confusion would end with the availability of the .tennis gTLD.

As another example, the Association of Tennis Professionals (ATP) World Tour has 62 tournaments around the globe, yet 54 do not include the word ʺtennisʺ in their event name. Instead, the name usually features either the location or the sponsor, making it difficult for fans who are not die-hard tennis followers to identify whether an eventʹs URL is for tennis, golf, auto racing, horse racing or another sport. But if [TournamentName].com became [TournamentName].tennis, there would be no guessing game and everyone would greatly benefit.

In recognition of the challenges faced by intellectual property stakeholders and particularly those engaged in the sale or licensing of tennis-related apparel and other products, for the .tennis gTLD, Washington Team Tennis has also identified several safeguards that are designed to mitigate fraud and abuse. Washington Team Tennis will require .tennis domain name registrants to comply with a more stringent Acceptable Use Policy, which emphasizes prohibitions on phishing, pharming, dissemination of malware, fast flux hosting, hacking, and child pornography. In addition, this policy will include the right of the registry to take action necessary to deny, cancel, suspend, lock, or transfer any registration in violation of this policy. Additional rights protection mechanisms and safeguards, including service-level coordination with the Trademark Clearinghouse, will ensure that trademark holders can protect their trademarks with a single registration. In cooperation with its back-end registry service and law enforcement, Washington Team Tennis will also implement a Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy to address domain names that have been registered and use in bad faith in the gTLD. Other safeguards, including Uniform Rapid Suspension and the implementation of a Thick WHOIS, will make it easier for rights holders to identify and locate infringing parties. A comprehensive set of information security policies and procedures will be established and actively enforced to ensure the security and protection of confidential information of registrants and end users. These are further described in Question 30a as part of our application submission and are based on the industry best practices for security, including SANS (SysAdmin, Audit, Network, Security) Institute, NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology), and Center for Internet Security (CIS).

To promote awareness of .tennis and its key benefits, we will target the tennis industry directly through strategic partnerships with leading worldwide tennis media and organizations. Through those relationships, we also plan to develop a global directory for all .tennis websites, sorted by category, so that if a user is looking specifically for tennis tips from a top-rated coach, he or she will not end up on a site dedicated to tennis apparel.

Washington Team Tennis is an independent entity, which is another reason we believe we are the ideal candidate to own and build the .tennis gTLD. We do not answer to any national tennis organizations, worldwide governing bodies, or professional tournaments. Our sole mission is to provide .tennis domains to consumers without bias in the hopes of growing the sport as much as possible.

With great customer service, experience building world-class companies, a user-friendly setup, the protection of our registrantʹs rights, and well-developed partnerships to help spread the word, we at Washington Team Tennis believe we can develop .tennis into an important, trustworthy resource for the global tennis community long into the future.

Similar gTLD applications: (0)