Pierre Germeau: “.sport Levels The Playing Field For The Online Sports Community With A Domain Made Solely For Sport”

Global Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF) Head of Digital Services Pierre Germeau discusses the importance of .sport, a web domain made solely for sport, and how it is levelling the playing field for the online sports community.

When we set about establishing .sport, we wanted to create a legitimate and secure web domain for the global sports community. As the united voice of sport, GAISF works to protect the integrity of the extension, ensuring that only fully qualified organisations, governing bodies, clubs, athletes, cities and businesses within the world of sport can use it. 

For .sport, the number one priority is ensuring a secure domain and to guarantee zero domain abuse, zero cyber-squatting, zero ambush marketing, zero identity misrepresentation and zero cyber speculation – which are all common issues with other popular internet domains or social network identities. We want to allow the global sports community to reach their online audiences from a credible, discoverable and memorable web domain.

“The validation process requires in particular that the domain holder’s qualities match the role and importance of the domain.”

Unlike other internet domains, obtaining a .sport portfolio requires going through a strict verification process to ensure the actor or organisation is legitimate. The validation process requires in particular that the domain holder’s qualities match the role and importance of the domain. As such, through a .sport internet domain, a sports-related organisation is able to instantly showcase to others that it is a recognised member of the international sports community. 

Additionally, the unique branding that comes with the .sport domain is an invaluable asset for any authorised organisation seeking to grow in the sports industry. Trustworthiness, reputation and sport are three of the key pieces of feedback that we most often hear from sports organisations which are using the .sport domain. We are also increasingly seeing that .sport users enjoy a ranking advantage and become more discoverable with .sport, therefore helping them to attract more high-quality customers and fans.

As the .sport community continues to grow, we are seeing organisations utilise their .sport portfolio in more innovative ways. For example, the World Flying Disc Federation (WFDF) has included all four of its upcoming major international events within its .sport portfolio to ensure consistency across its digital presence and for the convenience of both the flying disc community and event organisers. Meanwhile, the International Gymnastics Federation (FIG) used their portfolio to create websites for their various disciplines such as artistic-gymnastics.sport and parkour.sport.

The .sport family already has more than a thousand global stakeholders and International Sports Federations (IFs) who have registered their domain names. On this basis, they manage their .sport domain names as a large portfolio, comprising all the relevant sport and discipline names in many languages, as well as events and acronyms and variants, including frequent misspellings. Whenever the need for an additional name is discovered by the respective International Federation, the new domains are directly submitted to the validation process. Unless conflicts are identified, they are then automatically added to the portfolio. 

This .sport portfolio programme is now being expanded to support, at no extra cost, the automatic inclusion of .sport domains for their national federations. And we are always looking to expand because we believe that the sports community deserves better. For example, we are working hard on an integrated .sport programme for athletes and sport practitioners at large.

“Media of course play an incredibly important role in sharing sport with wider audiences, and it was clear that for .sport to truly capture all of sport, then longstanding media organisations had to be included.”

Earlier this year, Around the Rings, a specialist Olympic Movement media outlet, became the first media organisation to deploy the .sport domain name. Media of course play an incredibly important role in sharing sport with wider audiences, and it was clear that for .sport to truly capture all of sport, then longstanding media organisations had to be included. In addition to the use of .sport, through this partnership, readers of Around the Rings are able to efficiently check the availability of .sport domains from the Around the Rings website and newsletter. 

Above all else, .sport levels the playing field for the online sports community with an internet domain made solely for sport. Now is an exciting time to be a part of .sport as we look to continue our growth and diversify our portfolio of organisations and actors over the coming months and years ahead. And GAISF is committed to continuing to provide this invaluable service to all in the sports industry in the digital sphere. 

Interested to know more about the .sport domain name? Visit join.sport