The word is that Larry Ellison is pumping in something not far short of US $300m to help realise the vision of live TV coverage of the America’s Cup like we’ve never seen.
Last month I enthused about the ‘crash and burn’ of the America’s Cup World Series regatta on windy Plymouth Sound in front of thousands of spectators. The live TV coverage from multi-angles - from the water, from the air, the land and the on-board cameras - was breathtakingly exciting.
A number of non-sailing friends who happened to catch a glimpse of the coverage on one of the ITV terrestrial TV channels in the UK said they couldn’t stop watching. It was jaw-dropping, compelling stuff. But will they be so minded to make a note of when America’s Cup style racing is next on the TV? I think we’re some way off that yet.
Ellison’s decision to ‘pump prime’ the live TV coverage with such a large cash injection is very generous. But even Larry, huge sailing enthusiast that he is, is not going to continue to pour Oracle’s millions into this grand experiment forever. At some point the sponsorship needs to kick in and the America’s Cup needs to start washing its own face commercially.
With no end in sight for the recession that engulfed the western world three years ago, the sponsorship dollar has never been more elusive. Ellison and his main man Russell Coutts could not have picked a tougher time in the past 80 years to try and get their grand vision off the ground. It would be a terrible shame for Oracle Racing’s brave experiment to fail due to bad timing.
There are still plenty of America’s Cup traditionalists waiting to say ‘I told you so!’ to the current holders of the Cup, and maybe they will have their day. But there are a few things that have changed for good. For a start, the long-held belief that you can only have a decent match race in slow keelboats. Already, after just Cascais and Plymouth, that myth has been blown out of the water.
On this point, I offered Coutts the opportunity to stick two fingers up to his critics when I interviewed him in Plymouth. But he was too humble, too canny, or both, to take my bait. “I can understand that [point of view] because when then the idea first started getting discussed, I didn’t think multihulls would be that good for match racing until we tried them. And then we said, ‘Actually they’re pretty good!’ I think a lot of us monohull sailors had these fixed ideas about multihulls that frankly were incorrect. A lot of good sailors have actually rung me up and said, ‘Hey, I didn’t support this to start with but now I’m converted.’”
While I haven’t done the hard analysis, I’d wager that we witnessed more lead changes during one week of racing in Plymouth than we did in three months of competition in Valencia 2007. We had to wade through match after match of predictable outcomes before that thrilling showdown between Alinghi and Emirates Team New Zealand in the America’s Cup Match itself. In this new world of high-speed multihull racing, unpredictability is always present and as we saw in Plymouth, chaos is often not far round the corner. Cup racing has for the most part of its long history been boring and predictable. Whatever charges can be laid against Ellison and Coutts, boring and predictable are not among them.
“A joke.” That was how Dean Barker summed up his view of the AC45 racing in Venice in May. From a spectator’s point of view, I thought it was fantastic. But the light airs drifting off St Mark’s Square has reopened the debate about which should take precedence in the America’s Cup - the sport, or the show.
“Fastest boats, best sailors” is the official motto of the America’s Cup. It’s clear that everything about the 34th Cup is ‘made for TV’, and some of the old guard don’t like it. There’s not much lip service to history or tradition, it’s about engaging the TV audience - and therefore potential sponsors - in the sport of sailing like they’ve never been engaged before.
Alas, Naples marked the end of the America’s Cup World Series which has lit up the sailing world for the past two seasons. So why weren’t some of the big guns in Italy? The Defender and Challenger of Record had more important work to be done on San Francisco Bay. But if the top table of Oracle doesn’t show up at its own party, why should the rest of the world care?
Alas, Naples marked the end of the America’s Cup World Series which has lit up the sailing world for the past two seasons. So why weren’t some of the big guns in Italy? The Defender and Challenger of Record had more important work to be done on San Francisco Bay. But if Oracle doesn’t show up at its own party, why should the rest of the world care?
As we reach the business end of this America’s Cup cycle, we find ourselves in the ‘phoney war’ of dissembling and misinformation. Four fast boats on or above the water, yet the news flow has dried to a trickle of Twitter comments. Don’t we, the fans, deserve better? No! This is ‘their’ Cup, and ‘they’ can do what they want.
Adversity in the America’s Cup can come from the strangest of places, as Energy Team is finding out to its cost. The French team is facing the strangest of legal battles off the water, but as to the battles on the water.... well Ben Ainslie was the biggest winner at the recent event - even if he didn’t actually win.
After some ho-hum performances in Europe, I’d begun to wonder if the sailors at Oracle were really that bothered about results on the AC45 circuit. But after a barnstorming performance in Newport, I’ve revised my view. Whichever way you look at it - financial, technological or in pure sailing terms - the Defender is going to be very hard to beat.
With a home crowd to please, Luna Rossa burst on to the America’s Cup World Series with a performance that delighted their passionate fans and struck fear into the hearts of their competitors. The wild reception in Naples was a reminder that no one can top the Italians in their enthusiasm for sport - even sailing!
Visiting the Amels yard in Vlissingen, it was staggering to see how far the build of the Amels 199 has progressed since I last wrote about the radical Tim Heywood design a year or so ago. Heywood hopes the audacious curves of the 199 will forge a new direction in superyacht design, and having seen her in the flesh, I hope so too.
San Diego was meant to by my warm-weather escape from the English winter, but the shorts and T-shirt never even got unpacked. Should have brought my umbrella. Still, if the weather disappointed, the America’s Cup World Series continues to deliver unpredictability and drama. Question is, how many of the nine teams in San Diego will we see next year? For some, money’s too tight to mention, but at least the return of Luna Rossa provides the prospect of another big team to challenge the might of Oracle Racing.
Russell Coutts’s grand plan for the America’s Cup - to turn it into a TV and spectator-friendly sporting event - looks like it might just work. The people of Plymouth are not the easiest to please, but those who came to watch the nine high-speed catamarans crashing and capsizing around Plymouth Sound looked like they were genuinely enjoying themselves.
The first event of the America’s Cup World Series in Portugal is fast approaching. While the established Cup teams are sticking with their old keelboat personnel and re-skilling for a new format in fast cats, the start-up challengers are recruiting from the ranks of Olympic sailors. This new breed might have little to no experience of the America’s Cup, but they have grown up racing fast, high-performance boats like Tornados and 49er skiffs. The AC45 catamaran is an obvious next step for this younger generation.
“A joke.” That was how Dean Barker summed up his view of the AC45 racing in Venice in May. From a spectator’s point of view, I thought it was fantastic. But the light airs drifting off St Mark’s Square has reopened the debate about which should take precedence in the America’s Cup - the sport, or the show. 
