Tuvalu’s Two-Letter Jackpot: How “.TV” Became a Lifeline and a Calling Card

Tuvalu is small enough to vanish from many maps. Just 11,000 people live across its thin coral atolls in the Pacific. It has no industrial base, no deepwater port, and little in the way of natural resources. But it does own something most countries would never think twice about: its country-code internet domain, .tv.

In most cases, a two-letter ccTLD is just a technical label, .fr for France, .ke for Kenya. In Tuvalu’s case, those letters happen to match a globally recognised shorthand for television. In the late 1990s, when video streaming was still a novelty, this coincidence was already a marketing dream. Start-ups, broadcasters, and eventually streaming giants wanted it.

The government didn’t try to run the registry itself. Instead, it licensed .tv to outside operators, collecting royalties while the operator handled sales, marketing, and infrastructure. For years, Verisign ran the business. In 2021, Tuvalu switched to a new deal with GoDaddy Registry, with public statements and industry reports putting the country’s annual cut at around US $10 million, roughly double the previous rate. That’s a transformative sum for Tuvalu’s budget, accounting for a meaningful share of government income.

The math tells its own story. In 2019, before the GoDaddy uplift, .tv revenues were already estimated at about 8.4% of total government revenue. In a country where fishing licences and a sovereign wealth fund are the other big pillars of income, a stream of cash from an internet domain sits at the top tier of national finances.

From royalties to resilience

The money isn’t just parked in general accounts. In 2023, Tuvalu folded the marketing and branding of .tv into a unit inside the state-owned Tuvalu Telecommunications Corporation, aiming to keep more of the value chain onshore. That means less reliance on third parties for branding decisions and more direct say in how .tv is positioned to potential customers.

There’s a bigger context. Tuvalu is one of the most climate-vulnerable nations in the world. Rising seas threaten to swallow much of its land within this century. In 2021, the government launched the Future Now Project, a plan to preserve Tuvalu’s cultural, legal, and governmental identity even if its physical territory becomes uninhabitable.

Part of that vision is to create a “digital nation,” archiving land records, oral histories, and cultural heritage in secure online formats. The plan was showcased at COP27 in 2022 and has become central to Tuvalu’s climate diplomacy. Revenues from .tv are one of the few stable, predictable funding sources for these ambitions.

The domain name has also turned into an unusual form of soft power. Every time someone types in a .tv address, whether it’s a live sports site, an esports platform, or a niche streaming channel, they’re using Tuvalu’s national asset. That constant presence in the online entertainment space keeps the country’s name circulating in places far beyond the Pacific.

Lessons in digital leverage

Tuvalu’s experience offers a rare example of how a digital resource can act as a form of natural wealth. Negotiating the right terms matters. The jump from the old Verisign contract to the current GoDaddy agreement shows the value of re-evaluating a deal when market conditions change. So does the move to manage branding domestically.

It also shows that ccTLDs can function as more than geographic markers. Google treats .tv as a generic top-level domain in search results, meaning it’s not penalised for being tied to a small country. This keeps demand high and diverse, insulating revenues from being linked to one sector or region.

For Tuvalu, the challenge ahead is to protect the technical reputation of .tv, maintain its media-friendly identity, and ensure that royalties are channelled into projects that genuinely serve the country’s long-term survival. In the meantime, a tiny Pacific nation continues to pay for tomorrow with two letters and a dot.