A recent study commissioned by ICANN reveals despite introduction and growth of new gTLDs, .COM and other legacy TLDs have remained steady and rising. The report concludes: “we found no aggregate (worldwide) effect of new gTLD entry or registrations on legacy TLD registrations: registrations of legacy TLDs continued to follow the same pattern before and after the beginning of the New gTLD Program.” This is consistent with new gTLDs generally not being treated as substitutes for legacy TLDs, it concludes.

— Regional TLDs exception: Study observed a decline in both new gTLD and legacy registrations after the entry of the regional TLD (such as .nyc and .berlin) in the region relevant to that TLD. This suggests regional TLDs may be viewed as substitutes for other new gTLDs and legacy TLDs.

— Status of new gTLDs: “New gTLD registrations account for 9 percent of all gTLD registrations (as of March 2016), that is an aggregate of 16,570,035 registrations. This is an increase since November 2014, when new gTLD registrations accounted for approximately 2 percent of all gTLD registrations, an aggregate of 3,483,064.”

Other findings:

— The shares of domain name registrations across registries, and across registrars, continue to be more dispersed for new gTLDs compared with legacy gTLDs.

— The share of registrations held by the top four, top eight, and top fifteen registries and registrars by domain name registrations has declined.

— There is movement in the largest 15 registries and registrars as ranked by total domain registrations, with some registries or registrars who were not among the largest 15 in Phase I being ranked among the largest 15 in Phase II.

— The largest percentage growth in the number of registry operators occurred in the Asia Pacific and European regions.