The communities involved are based on ethnic, geographical, professional, technical or other theme concepts proposed by private agencies or organizations that establish and enforce rules restricting the eligibility of registrants to use the TLD.
[2] For example, the .aero TLD is sponsored by SITA, which limits registrations to members of the air transport industry.
ICANN only applied the term sponsored TLD to TLDs in the first two rounds of new gTLDs.
It did not use the distinction between sponsored and unsponsored for new gTLDs in the 2012 round.
[6] Moreover, some sTLDs migrated to non-sponsored gTLDs on the Registry Agreement renewal.