The process doesn't care that there are 200 bidders, the high bidder wins. The risk is in too many people bidding, and then you paid 185k and escrowed a amount of capital to do so. Now imagine you are participating in lots of auctions, it would be a substantial amount that is tied up for this process. In reality everyone who bids has a business model to actually sell the tld should they win. Not too much speculation going on here. What I don't recall is if you get your fee back if you lose, I want to say yes.