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The
Lowdown
Welcome to the
The Lowdown from
DN Journal - your source for notable news and information from all
corners of the global domain name industry!
The Lowdown is
compiled by DN Journal Editor & Publisher
Ron Jackson.
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A
Peak Inside GoDaddy's First Free Domain Investor
Meetup Held at the Industry Giant's Arizona Office
Last Week |
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GoDaddy
issued an open invitation for domain investors to
attend a free Domain Investor Meetup that
was held at the company's Tempe, Arizona office on
May 7, 2026. Space was limited so attendance was
limited to the first 40 people to sign up for the
unique opportunity.
Attendees
came from as far away as Texas to take advantage
of the invitation to spend one on one time and
learn from GoDaddy's experts. They included one of
the best in the business in Joe Styler, the
Senior Marketing Manager for GoDaddy's Domain
Academy, who hosted the event. When
guests arrived for the Meetup that ran from 3pm to
7pm they began with an office tour, snacks and
networking. At 4pm they were able to choose
one of three breakout tracks. Each was led
by a different team that focused on a key category
of the domain investment workflow.
The
sessions offered were: |
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Anthony
Kirlew (Domainicate.com) and,
at right, Joe Styler (GoDaddy's
Domain Academy) at the Domain Investor
Meetup GoDaddy hosted at their Tempe,
Arizona office on May 7, 2026. |
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-
Auctions API
- One of the engineers behind the platform,
Mihai Nicolae, walked investors through the
Auctions API and allowed them to get hands on
access to the API.
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Afternic listing
+ selling - Adam Ramsdell took the
investors through a hands-on masterclass of how
to list domains for maximum exposure, best
practices for Lease to Own, plus listing
optimization.
-
DomainNames.com
- Tom McCarthy (who has over $75 million
in lifetime domain sales, over 9,000 deals) took
investors through what DomainNames.com
accomplishes, what sets it apart from other
brokerages, and the marketing approach behind
DomainNames.com.
Those provided about
three hours of quality time spent with the actual
builders in a small enough group to get specific
questions answered. Many thought the Auctions
API session alone was worth the trip. Programmatic
access to GoDaddy Auctions is a competitive
edge that most investors haven’t explored yet,
and learning it directly from the engineer who
works on the platform daily is not something you’ll find
in a tutorial.
Above
& below: Scenes from the breakoput sessions
courtesy of attendee Anthoy Kirlew.
After the sessions
wrapped, many attendees took advantage of one of the
wide variety of dinner spots in Tempe to continue
their conversations. The Meetup drew so much
positive feedback there could well be more to come!
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(Posted
May 12, 2026) To refer others to the post
above only (and not the full Lowdown
column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2026/posts/0512.htm
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.ART Celebrates 10th Anniversary
By Launching .ART Award Program With Prizes Valued
at Over $50,000 |
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The .ART
domain registry is celebrating their 10th
anniversary this year. To mark the occasion
they have launched the .ART
Award, a new global awards program
with more than $50,000 in prize value for
artists worldwide, including a cash First Prize of
$15,000.
The
thing that makes the new award different from
other art prizes is the focus — instead
of just submitting a finished work, artists
share their creative process through their
.ART domain. The domain can point to a website,
profile page or social media |
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presence
that tells their story and source of inspiration, as
well as showing their art. There is no cost to enter
and put yourself in the running for these prizes:
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$15,000
Grand Prize
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Artist
residencies in France and Spain
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A
major editorial feature in Whitewall Magazine
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A
premium .ART domain valued at $10,000
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Additional
prizes will be announced throughout the
application period.
An
all-star 10-person jury including Jerry Saltz (Critic,
New York Magazine), Dean Phelus (AAM)
and Akanksha Ballaney (Artsy/Artnet),
to name just a few, will select the winners. Applications
will remain open through November 1, 2026
with winners to be announced at Art Basel Miami in
December.
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(Posted
May 11, 2026) To refer others to the post
above only (and not the full Lowdown
column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2026/posts/0511.htm
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Today's
10th Anniversary of Armenia's IDN Shows How
Domains Can Become a Source of National
Pride |
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We
posted an article
Monday about worldwide domain registrations
nearing the 400 million mark. That is an
astounding number - one that will become a reality
because people around the globe have discovered
the countless ways domains can be used to create
something long-lasting and meaningful that is
accessible to anyone, anywhere with just the click
of mouse. In many cases domains become a point of national
pride - something we are seeing today as
Armenian celebrates the 10th anniversary of .հայ
- the nation's native language IDN
(internationalized domain name). ICANN
approved the TLD on April 26, 2016 and it
was launched for public use on May
5, 2016 by the administrator - Internet
Society of Armenia (ISOC |
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Armenia),
the organizatiuon that also oversees Armenia's .AM
country code top level domain. As
noted in an article at ArmenianDomains.com,"The introduction of the .հայ domain was intended to encourage the visibility of online content and websites in the Armenian language and
script, helping Armenian entities establish a unique online presence
that mirrors their cultural and linguistic heritage.
Many Armenian websites using the .AM ccTLD have also acquired their .հայ equivalent either to use as a separate website in the
native language of Armenia or forward the domain to their .AM website." More
insight into the impact that a native script
TLD like .հայ
came from a recent meeting
of Armernian leaders devoted to growing
the TLD's user base and drawing more attention to
Armenian langiage content online. In that
discussion, Kristina Hakobyan, Board Vice
Chair of the Internet Society NGO, emphasized
that Armenian, as one of the world’s oldest
languages with its own distinct alphabet,
deserves a strong presence in the global digital
environment. She said, "Expanding opportunities
for online communication in Armenian not only helps preserve
national identity, but also addresses practical
needs by improving internet accessibility for
wider segments of society." 
Last
year's 9th anniversary celebration of the the first
registration in the Armenian-script .հայ
included a festive flashmob featuring a performance
by “Karin” Folk, Song and Dance Group. It was
organized by Internet Society NGO – the
manager of both .am and
.հայ domains.
(Photo courtesy of ISOC.AM)
With the
10th anniversary approaching, the March 2026 meeting
was also scheduled with an eye on a Universal
Acceptance Day event that was held soon
after on March 31st in Yerevan. On that topic
Kristina noted that Armenia’s participation in the
global Universal
Acceptance movement marked a significant
milestone in this effort. The initiative seeks to
guarantee that all languages and domain names are
fully recognized and supported across the internet. Siranush
Dvoyan, Chair of the Language Committee of the
Ministry of Education, Science, Culture and Sport of
Armenia, also took part and presented the Language
Committee’s efforts to advance the digital
transformation of Armenian, broaden the scope of
Armenian-language content online and enhance its
overall quality. She stressed the importance of
effective collaboration between government
institutions and professional organizations to
expand the use of Armenian in the digital sphere.
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(Posted
May 5, 2026) To refer others to the post
above only (and not the full Lowdown
column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2026/posts/0505.htm
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Worldwide
Domain Name Registrations Nearing the 400 Million
Mark After a Healthy 1st Quarter Detailed in
Latest Verisign Industry Brief |
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VeriSign,
(the administrator of the .com and .net
TLDs) has released their latest quarterly Domain
Name Industry Brief (DNIB) covering
the 1st quarter of 2026. This update showed
that the total number of domain registrations
across all TLDs worldwide ended the most
recent quarter at 392.5 million. With
24.1 million domains added over the past year,
that reprsents a healthy 6.5% leap year
over year. As a point of comparison, at the end of
Q1-2025 total domains registered had only risen
1.7% from the previous year.
.Com,
by far, the dominant TLD on the Internet, ended
the latest quarter with 163.6 million
registered domains, up 6.4 million YOY,
representing a 4% increase. .Net
went the opposite direction with a slight dip from
12.6 million registrations last year to 12.4
million at the end of 1Q-2026. |
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ccTLDs
finished the latest quarter with 146.3million
registrations, 3.4 million more than a year
ago, representing a 2.4% increase YOY. New
gTLDs, working from a smaller user base, were
able to pile up more impressive gains percentage
wise. With 49.6 million registrations at the
end of 1Q-2026, the new G's were up a whopping 31.3%
after adding 11.8 milliion domains over the
past year.
For
legacy gTLDs not including .com and .net (a
group dominated by .org that also includes
older TLDs that were released prior to the beginning
of ICANN's new gTLD program in 2012 like .info and
.biz), registrations stood at 20.5 million at
the end of the latest quarter, up 2.6 million domains
from a year ago. That gave this group a double digit
increase of 14.6% year over year.
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(Posted
May 4, 2026) To refer others to the post
above only (and not the full Lowdown
column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2026/posts/0504.htm
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D3
Announced the Launch of Domain Asset Vehicles - the First Tokenized Institutional Domain Portfolio
- Today at Dominion 2026 in Las Vegas |
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Dominion
2026 - billed as "The
Ultimate Liquidity Event for Domain Investors"
- is running today and tomorrow (April 29
& 30) at Resorts World in Las Vegas
where D3
took advantage of the spotlight to break some
major company news. D3, the
core contributor to Doma
Protocol - the Domain Name System
(DNS)-compliant blockchain for tokenizing
internet domains - announced the launch of Domain
Asset Vehicles (DAVs). D3's
press release states "DAVs convert entire
institutional domain portfolios into a single
tokenized asset that gives investors access to shared
ownership of premium domain portfolios,
onchain. Fred
Hsu, Co-Founder and CEO of D3,
said “The domain industry has been sitting
on a multi-billion-dollar asset class with
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virtually no financial
infrastructure to match its value. DAVs
give
institutional portfolio owners a way to access
liquidity at scale without giving up control of
the assets that define their business.” 
(File
photo): In January, D3 Co-Founder & CEO Fred
Hsu (in gray sports coat at top left), drew a
crowd to his Guru Table at the 2026 Internet
Commerce Association Annual Meeting in Las
Vegas where attendees took the opportunity to
learn more about D3's determination to turn domain
names into liquid assets.
Hsu noted that domain names represent a $360 billion asset class but are largely illiquid, with portfolios sitting idle for years between sales. DAVs bundle an entire domain portfolio into a single
token, then sales of the DAV on Doma Protocol flow to the portfolio owner while the domains remain listed and sell as usual
on existing marketplaces, with proceeds automatically distributed back to token
holders.
DAVs build
on Doma Protocol's existing track record of domain
tokenization. Since launching mainnet in
December 2025, the protocol has processed over $76
million in trading volume across 10 million+
transactions, with 46,000 unique wallets and 425+
premium fractional domain launches. According to the
press release, "DAVs extend this infrastructure
to institutional scale, giving registrars,
domain funds, and large portfolio holders access to
the same onchain liquidity rails now available to
individual premium domains across popular ecosystems
like Solana, Base, and Avalanche.
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In
another announcement made at the
Dominion 2026 conference,
D3 introduced their Doma Agentic
Engine, a new tool to improve the
discoverability of domains for AI agents. The
Doma Agentic Engine gives domain owners a
real-time score into how AI agents perceive
and interact with their domains, portfolios,
and websites — surfacing content gaps,
missing protocols endpoints, and lost
opportunities. Any domain on Doma can use
the Agentic Engine’s one-click
remediation tools and go from
undiscoverable to fully agent-ready in
minutes.
Inder
Singh, Vice President of Product
and Technology at D3, said, "Every
domain owner is about to face a choice:
become part of the agentic internet or get
left behind. Agent discovery optimization
(ADO) will be to the agentic internet what
search engine optimization (SEO) was to
Google." |
Image
from Bigstock |
The first
set of DAVs and the Doma Agentic Engine will both
go live in Q2 2026. D3 is currently taking
applications for institutional domain investors and
registrars to create and launch their own DAVs. The
Domain Asset Vehicle is live at dav.doma.xyz
and the Doma Agentic Engine at ai.doma.xyz.
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(Posted
April 29, 2026) To refer others to the post
above only (and not the full Lowdown
column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2026/posts/0429.htm
*****
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Last
Opportunity to Lock in Lowest Price to Attend
NamesCon Global 2026 in Miami Will Be Expiring
Friday Night (April 24). |
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All
roads in the domain world will be leading to Miami
for the 2026
NamesCon Global conference that is
coming up November 11 & 12 when the big
show returns to the downtown Ice Palace
where it ran for the first time in Florida last
year. If you register
before midnight Friday night (April 24) you
can cut the cost of attending dramatically. That's
when the super early bid ticket offer that cuts
the $999 Standard Pass price to just $349 will
end. |
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If
you're under 30, you can save even more with a new
Under 30 Pass that NameCon is introducing to make it
more affordable for newcomers to meet and learn from
the broad array of industry leaders and pioneers who
make NamesCon Global a can't miss event. As always,
we will be there to cover it all, of course. 
Above:
A scene from the live domain auction at the 2025
NamesCon Global conference at the Ice Palace in
Miami last November. Below:
A shot from the Closing Night party at Wynwood Falls
in the Miami Art District.
(Photo credit: Eddie Sixto).
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For
2026, NamesCon organizers are promising a bigger
than ever custom built event "for the domain
industry and broader identity ecosystem, from
registries and registrars navigating a changing
regulatory and competitive landscape to domain
investors and digital asset holders tracking where
value is moving." We hope to see you there!
(Posted
April 20, 2026) To refer others to the post
above only (and not the full Lowdown
column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2026/posts/0420.htm
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Race
for 2026 .ORG Impact Awards Opens With Call for
Nominations - Winners Will Share a $180,000 Pool
of Prize Money
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Public
Interest Registry (PIR), the
nonprofit stewards of the .ORG domain, has opened
nominations for the 8th annual .ORG
Impact Awards. The awards are the centerpiece
of a celebration that recognizes outstanding
mission-driven individuals and organizations
from the global .ORG Community for their
positive contributions to society.
PIR's
.ORG top-level domain has powered mission-driven
organizations around the globe for over 40
years. From large corporations to small
community groups to multinational NGOs, .ORGs work
to positively
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impact the communities
they
serve. Over the past eight years, the .ORG
Impact Awards have recognized more than 300 outstanding
.ORGs from over 120 countries. Through the
Awards, PIR has awarded $865,000 for
transformative work taking place around the world.
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Jon
Nevett
CEO, Public Interest Registry |
PIR
CEO Jon Nevett noted, "The .ORG
Impact Awards remind us that meaningful
change often starts at the community
level, driven by people who see a need
and come together to take action. Our .ORG
Community of changemakers inspires us every
year. As we open this year's nominations,
we're excited to uplift and celebrate the
next wave of changemakers who are
reimagining what's possible and
strengthening communities around the
world."
Applications
will be accepted from now to May 27, 2026.
The categories include:
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Health
and Healing
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Quality
Education for All
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Diversity,
Equity, and Inclusion
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Environmental
Stewardship
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Hunger
and Poverty
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Community
Building
-
Rising
Star
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Applications
are free and open to any organization with a
.ORG domain. The Rising Star category is open to any
individual under the age of 30 affiliated with a
.ORG domain. The award categories are designed to be
inclusive of any and all .ORGs that are working to
make a positive impact in the world. Organizations
may apply for multiple categories of awards
if more than one category is a good fit. The top
five entries in each category will be named as
finalists on August 11, 2026. Five
finalists will be named in each category with all
35 finalists being invited to attend the final
awards ceremony in Washington, D.C. with
complimentary travel and opportunities to meet with
other .ORG Community leaders and hosted by a
celebrity on October 6, 2026. Category winners
and the 2026 .ORG of the Year will be announced at
the award ceremony. Winners of each category will
take home $10,000 in donation award funds,
and the .ORG of the Year will receive a total
of $50,000. The 35 finalists across all
categories will receive a $2,500 donation.
To
nominate an organization or individual for a .ORG
Impact Award, visit www.orgimpactawards.org.
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(Posted
April 17, 2026) To refer others to the post
above only (and not the full Lowdown
column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2026/posts/0417.htm
*****
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Andrew
Miller Reveals $10 Million Sale of Club.com in
2025 - One of Top Ten Publicly Reported Domain
Sales of All Time |
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Pioneering
domain broker Andrew
Miller (President at ATM
Holdings and Strategic Advisor to Hilco
Digital) has closed many of the top
domain sales of all time. While many of those have
been made public over the years, most have been
subject to non-disclosure agreements, Today
Andrew, who was profiled in our April 2024 Cover
Story, revealed one of his biggest
sales to date in a post
to his LinkedIn account. Representing the buyer in
a deal closed early last year, Andrew, via ATM
Holdings and Hilco Digital, orchestrated a $10
million sale of Club.com. |
Image
from Bigstock
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Andrew
Miller |
Andrew
said “ I rarely get to proactively
disclose the price of a major category defining
and exact match brand domain
transaction that I oversee as they are under
NDA. In some cases, such as Chat .com
($15.5 million), the buyer discloses it,
in others like Rocket.com ($15 million)
and Gold.com ($8.6 million), the
price is disclosed in a 10Q filing. Today is
a rare exception, and I can confirm that
we at ATM Holdings/Hilco Digital oversaw
the sale of Club .com last year for $10
million and this morning the business
that acquired it has emerged from
stealth mode. I am so excited to
watch the company become a category leader,
just as its founders have with their other
businesses, Stake and Kick. Club
is an invite-only social platform built
for creators. Powered by Club Cash,
it gives creators a new way to engage, grow,
and monetize their audience. Congrats and
good luck to a good friend and his entire
team! You are going to crush it!” |
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At
$10 million, Club.com ties with
Connect.com in the #10 position
on our list of the biggest
publicly reported domain sales of all time.
It also becomes the #2 sale on our 2025
Top 100 Sales Chart.
Editor's
Note: After publication of this
article we learned there had been a
miscommunication regarding the month
Club.com was sold in last year. It was in
June rather than February as we originally
thought. Usually that makes no difference
but in this case it plays a role in how we
chart domains. If a sale is being reported
for the first time and has closed within
the past 12 months, we put it on our
latest bi-weekly
Top 20 sales chart and add it to
the current year's YTD
Sales Chart. If older, we put it
on the Top 100 Chart in our public Archive
for the year in which it sold. As a result,
Club.com was placed on the 2025 Top 100.
When we release our next bi-weekly domain
sales update the evening of April 29,
we will move Club.com to the 2026 YTD Chart
and it will also be included on the next Top
20 Sales Chart as it closed well within the
12-month window for both. |
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(Posted
April 14 2026) To refer others to the post
above only (and not the full Lowdown
column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2026/posts/0414.htm
*****
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NamesCon
Global 2026 Gearing Up With a New Partnership, a
Chief Evangelist and Super Early Bird Ticket
Prices That End Soon |
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NamesCon
Global has some very ambitious plans for
their return to Miami for the 2026
conference that will be held November 11 &
12. The groundwork is being laid early
to facilitate some big changes in the agenda,
partnerships and floor plan - all designed to
deliver the most productive NamesCon meeting to
date. Toward that end, NamesCon is teaming
up with the i2Coalition
and Domain
Name Association to build out a shared
space for registries, registrars, investors,
brokers, and domain professionals to come
together with the partners shaping what’s
next for the domain ecosystem. i2 Coalition |
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Co-Founder
and Executive Director Christian
Dawson is so committed to the task he
has taken on additional duties as Chief
Evangelist for NamesCon Global. Christian
said, “The i2Coalition and Domain Name Association represent the companies shaping the Internet’s infrastructure and the domain
ecosystem. Together with NamesCon Global, this partnership brings the industry’s key players into one place to connect, collaborate, and help drive what comes next.” A
steady stream of details will be forthcoming in the
weeks and months ahead as NamesCon's vision for
their return to the Ice Palace in downtown
Miamii comes together (you can see how their first
Miami event last November played out in our 2025
NamesCon Global review). There
is already one important detail about the
2026 conference that you will want to act on right
away if you want to save some money. That is the
show's Super
Early Bird ticket offer that is now
open. The deal shaves the $999 cost of the Standard
Pass down to just $349 but the price will be going
up on Friday, April 24.
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(Posted
April 8, 2026) To refer others to the post
above only (and not the full Lowdown
column) you can use this URL:
https://www.dnjournal.com/archive/lowdown/2026/posts/0408.htm
*****
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