Seems rather odd, why didn’t Verisign even bother to bid for this?
Perhaps they might be more worried if .com was actually put out to regular competitive bids…
I read an article here by a local (George Siosi) which explained it well
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Tuvalu is sinking due to climate change and they need more cash
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In 2000, Tuvalu entered into a contract with Verisign to lease “.tv” for USD$50 million over a 12-year period.
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With a GDP per capita of USD$3,702 (in 2017), and the $50m Versign deal making up 10% of the Tuvalu government’s total revenue (which helped paved the nation’s roads), Tuvalu could really transform themselves further with a better deal.
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Opening .tv up to a bidding war between foreign companies means you can let the market speak for itself in terms of how much Tuvalu could really get from .tv.
Therefore Godaddy is most likely making even less out of it than Verisign - see The Register:
The cost of running the registry is thought to be approximately 75 cents per domain, meaning Verisign has been making roughly a $20m profit each year from its contract.
Maybe Godaddy did it for $10m etc and just not worth it to Verisign ?
With a likely bigger chunk of change coming from GoDaddy, it’s going to have more to invest in what it calls its “digital nation” strategy, which appears to involve investing heavily in blockchain-based technologies to compensate for the fact that it may well disappear beneath the waves over the next few decades.
Oh FFS!
I can understand that, I guess I’m more surprised Verisign wouldn’t simply up the stake as well and compete instead of giving up $mil in profits.
I don’t think I told Tuvalu all I want for Christmas is to have to work with GoDaddy but here we are…
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I’m not a fan of this vertical integration .biz, it creates a lot of .buzz, but why on .earth you’d want them all in the same .club…
I’m sure it’s a .win for the world’s largest registrars to add to their .health(y) margins already but it’s not a .party .one would like to see happening.
Especially when they put them on the website at less than the wholesale price to other registrars - aside from the nominal icann fee component they’re essentially ‘free’ within the GD group, so even without an official “promotion price” to registrars they can always undercut for marketshare 
The one thing that annoys me most about all the backend hopping, switching and changing is that it is mostly us registrars picking up the tab as we have to implement the TLD on a different backend with all the changes to handling and process that brings.
Maybe it is time to ask the registries to pass on some of their savings from switching backends to the registrars to compensate for this work that gives us no benefit at all…
If only it was the obscure TLDs switching to better platforms I wouldn’t mind as much!
I’m considering ditching one of my favourite personal domains because it’s a small ccTLD with a manual backend and management appears to be a collection of badly coded 30 year old scripts… seems to manage to fail to take payment every few years and drop my domain with no notice so have to re-register it! 
I think registrars should insist rather than ask on that one - a payment/credit per domain for switching backend
A question for the mic in Hague maybe …
“Will the board consider starting a PDP on registries compensating those affected by back-end switches which are a significant cost to registrars, and done entirely as a cost-saving/growth strategy for registries without providing any tangible benefits to registrants who ultimately pay the price ?” 
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#While I agree with the sentiment, this is not really an ICANN board issue. If a PDP is to be launched, it would have to come from the GNSO. But I have my doubts this is something that can be even subject to a PDP as it is essentially a pricing issue.
The best place to address it would likely have been as part of the subsequent procedures PDP as something that should have been included in the new Registry Agreements for the next round, as these have a way of oozing down to the existing TLDs as well.
PDPs are not Board issues.
If you want to start a PDP you have to do it via the GNSO
And even then I don’t see why the GNSO would want to get embroiled in what is essentially a commercial issue.
I 100% agree that the backend switching is a major PITA, but a PDP is not how to fix it