I just ran into this thread.
YuriDavid said:
Endless meetings in Geneva
It's always DNS. Always.
Having actually sat in one of those (not ICANN, similar governance body), the catering alone would eat a good chunk of $36M. The real answer is probably boring: compliance overhead, legal, the usual nonprofit bloat. Still annoying that every registrar frames it as "ICANN fee" like it's a tax they have no control over. Which, fair, they don't. But the transparency is basically zero. Anyone ever actually FOIA'd or equivalent'd the detailed breakdown? Or is that a waste of everyone's time.
