The new gTLD .Bet has been settled in what we can only guess was a private auction won by Afilias.

Afilias won the rights to operate the new Top Level Domain beating out two big portfolio applicants Donuts and Famous Four Media as well as Ladbrokes a publicly traded  British based gaming company.

According to Afilias  application with ICANN they expect to have 21K .Bet domain registrations by the end of year three.

.Bet was set to be resolved later this month in the ICANN Last Resort Auction.

Here is what else Afilias had to say about its plan to operate .Bet”

“There is a proliferation of betting sites across the existing TLD Internet space, creating consumer confusion about the validity or purpose of some sites. What about the future of betting? Beyond betting on sports or games of chance and skills, there is also a growing trend on the Internet where betting, decision science and forecasting are coming together.

Many emerging websites use betting and the “wisdom of crowds” to predict the outcome of life’s most interesting decisions and events. Who will win the next U.S. presidential election? Will private enterprise land a spacecraft on the Moon on or before December 31, 2012? Increasingly, when Internet users want to get an educated guess, they don’t ask the experts or the pundits, they go where people bet their money and reputations.

The purpose of the .BET TLD is to create an easily identifiable Internet namespace where the activities carried on are clearly understood and consumers visiting them would know exactly what they were getting and from whom. This creates value for registrants in that they can assume that visitors have arrived at their websites willingly and in full knowledge, so registrants have the opportunity to increase the professionalism and quality of their offerings, improving the quantity and quality of their marketplace offerings. Additionally, visionary entrepreneurs can work with allied and competitive registrants to create new online applications to create superior value for the consumers who buy a .BET domain name.

The .BET TLD mission is to become the professional badge that .BET registrants (betting industry vendors) and their betting customers can use to learn about responsible betting, play and conduct business.

Although the total number of gambling establishments worldwide approaches 5,000, we anticipate that many of those establishments will buy multiple domains, with both proactive and defensive intentions, and that changing laws and customs will allow for more innovation of offerings in this space.

Moreover, we expect that a fair amount of registrants plan to develop sites that are informative in nature, and not strictly dedicated to delivering new services. Therefore, we anticipate 21,100 domains under management (DUMs) by the end of the third year of operation.””