A Data-Driven Analysis of Structural Asymmetries in the gTLD Registrar Market
Tobias Sattler · IEEE Access · 2026
This study analyzes two years of registrar-level transaction data (Jan 2023–Dec 2024) from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to examine structural patterns in the global gTLD registrar market. Using aggregated transaction records across eight major generic top-level domains (TLDs), and excluding country-code TLDs because harmonized transaction-level data are not publicly available, we show that registrar size is strongly correlated with activity levels (Pearson’s r $\approx ~0.94$ ) and that market activity is highly concentrated, with the top 10 percent of registrars performing over 90 percent of all additions and transfers. Renewals account for nearly half of all recorded events, highlighting the dominance of portfolio maintenance over dynamic market behavior. These findings reveal that ICANN’s uniform registrar policy framework operates in a market characterized by substantial structural asymmetry. This paper presents a reproducible, data-driven assessment of registrar behavior at scale, offering empirical evidence relevant to discussions on proportionate and risk-aware governance approaches within the gTLD registrar ecosystem.