Getting bullets for the gun

A top panel including ISAF's Jerome Pels, discussed 'governing the sport of yacht racing' at the World Yacht Racing Forum

One of the most interesting topics to be discussed at last week’s World Yacht Racing Forum was ‘Governing the Sport of Yacht Racing’. On this panel was Scott MacLeod, former President of the World Match Racing Tour and recently with the Women’s Tennis Association; Nick Fry, Chief Executive of the Brawn F1 team; Sir Robin Knox-Johnston of Clipper Ventures; and, after the hammering President Goran Peterssen took at last year’s WYRF, a rather nervous looking ISAF Secretary General, Jerome Pels.

As was the case in the America’s Cup debate, there was considerably less mud-slinging in this session, compared to last year's WYRF, and Pels in fact came out of it smelling of roses. He may have managed this by expressing personal opinion rather than what is actually going to happen at ISAF, but at least it was reassuring that there was someone within ISAF with an understanding of what professional event organisers within our sport require of them as a governing body.

A classic example of the short comings of ISAF in its ability to operate as a commercial entity has come in the last months over the introduction of the Louis Vuitton Trophy, coming at a particularly critical time as the sale of the F10 Holding’s stake in the World Match Racing Tour was going through (see yesterday's article here). Aside from the infrastructure and good will in place, the prize asset of this deal was the selling of the Tour’s ISAF ‘Special Event’ status, granting the Tour the exclusive rights to hold a match racing series culminating in a world champion being decided.

In September when it was launched, the Louis Vuitton Trophy was known as the ‘Louis Vuitton World Series’ organised by the ‘World Sailing Team Association’. That it was using the words ‘world’ and ‘series’ seeming to be in direct violation of the Tour’s agreement with ISAF.

Equally the Louis Vuitton Trophy is hovering just as close to the America’s Cup (which also has ISAF 'Special Event' status), with which it has no association, despite it being a match racing event held in former America’s Cup class boats. There is no America’s Cup branding on any of the boats or around the Louis Vuitton Trophy events, for the organisers are aware that compared to ISAF, America’s Cup Management/Alinghi/SNG - the rights holders to the America’s Cup - have better paid lawyers with substantially sharper teeth.

After much lobbying from the World Match Racing Tour, ISAF managed to get the name of the series changed to the Louis Vuitton Trophy, but in the mind of the Tour’s Acting President, Peter Gilmour, this wasn’t nearly enough. "They should have come out and be firmer and stronger," Gilmour told thedailysail. "They let Louis Vuitton cloud their judgement. But that is what you get from an organisation that is essentially a democracy, that they are. The leadership level needs some substantial improvement."

According to Gilmour, ISAF seems unwilling to go any further than this, but he remains resolved. "It is very damaging - there’s no doubt about it," he says of the Louis Vuitton Trophy. "If they choose to put any more events on, we will certainly continue to... we will express very firmly to ISAF that we won’t allow further events to go on." He maintains it is ISAF’s responsibility to protect the Tours’ rights.

"We haven’t got nowhere," continues Gilmour on a more positive note. “We have had a meeting and got them to change the name. So we have got somewhere with that. But we want them to work within the rules. They are effectively trying to either usurp our rights or they are trying to usurp the America’s Cup rights. If you want to do what you’re doing - go to the America’s Cup and get a license from them. It is unbelievable that Louis Vuitton themselves stand for such brand imagery and protection of their counterfeit rights that they can be doing this to somebody else."

Quite aside from the whole Olympic classes debate, there is also the issue of numerous clashing dates within every walk of sailing. At the World Yacht Racing Forum the most discuss was that of the Velux 5 Oceans clash going ahead at the same time as the Route du Rhum and the Barcelona World Race. In recent years we have also seen the Volvo Ocean Race change to a three year cycle (while the rest of the sailing world operates on a four year cycle). And the America’s Cup remains a law unto itself.



At the conference, Jerome Pels compared his job to being the new Sheriff of the Wild West. He admitted that ISAF is too democratic, too liberal and too friendly. It is an organisation driven by the sailors, there is not enough strategic thinking for, as he put it, democracy and strategy are two things that are completely contrary.

"It is a typical attitude in sailing, where people say ‘we have a race, we want to do this’ and immediately people get enthusiastic. The biggest example of that is that we tried to get some structure into Olympic sailing. What do we do? We add more World Championships to it. So for instance in the dinghy structure, you now have an ISAF World Championship, you have an ISAF World Cup, the ISAF World Rankings, and class World Championships, etc. So that is an example - it is a mess and something needs to be done.”

Another example of ISAF being overly democratic was over the Tornado being dropped. "It was a vote. We asked the members, who are putting the teams together - what do you want? And the members voted for the least popular equipment. It was just a matter of that and also had to do with cost, because the class was getting expensive, because of the development. Some people thought it was very expensive to run a multihull campaign and in the end the least popular dropped off – so no strategy at all. That is changing completely in ISAF and we are also forced to do this."

Pels compared choosing Olympic classes for those involved to it being like a religion, but this was entirely the wrong way to be making these choices. The gear should not be there for historic reasons, it should simply be fit for purpose. He added that this was also going on within youth sailing where traditionally the Optimist is the boat sailed at major competitions, but there are now faster, brighter and more popular alternatives. "If ISAF doesn’t grab that, then we’ll be stuck with all the old classes that no one to sail and they will buy the equipment that is popular and we are not relevant any more."

When it comes to Olympic sailing the constant fear within ISAF is that sailing may be dropped as an Olympic sport (and their primary source of revenue dries up). So there are times when the democratic process gets led and one such example was over the introduction of the medal races. According to Pels this came about during their one four yearly meeting with the head of Olympic television, who was fine with sailing being the most expensive sport in the Games to televise, but was not fine with a winner not necessarily being known at the end of the final race. So the solution was to introduce on the water umpiring, but this would not be possible if a full fleet was racing. Hence the medal race was introduce for the top ten in each class.

While hugely unpopular at the time, according to Pels the medal race has had a dramatic effect on the television audience. "In the viewing figures, sailing was second bottom of all the other sports. Now we are in the mid-table and in some markets we are in the top three. In the UK we were the third best viewed sport in the entire Olympics - that came to all my colleagues in the other federations as an enormous shock."

So this is typical of the ISAF dilemma - the medal race was introduced for the greater good of the sport, but was thoroughly unpopular with Olympic sailors who would have preferred to continue racing up to the last minute as a full fleet and ideally offshore in the best wind conditions, even if this made the racing impossible to view from the shore.
Trying to manage the calendar in a more dictatorial way would cause an even great stir for ISAF. As Pels put it: "If you want that from our organisation, a lot of that freedom will go. I will need to have more bullets in my gun and maybe quite a few people in the audience here will be on the receiving end of that. If there are too many oceanic events, okay, we will cut it down and we will only have one and I will be even less popular than I already am! But the sport will be better off. I am prepared to not be very popular."



Nick Fry’s participation on the panel was excellent as Formula 1 has an entirely different structure to ISAF, as for the last 30 years it has been effectively a dictatorship, run, of course, by Bernie Ecclestone. To put it is in perspective with say a Cup or a Volvo Ocean Race team - Brawn GP has 450 permanent employees and, by Formula 1 standards, a modest annual budget of 100 million Euros, while the biggest teams such as McLaren and Ferrari are around a third bigger again.

While Ecclestone’s role in the sport over the last decades had managed to make motor racing one of the world’s top three sports, the dictorial model isn’t necessary the best for the sport going forwards, Fry warned.

"I think the first part of moving forward is starting with a strategy and working out the objective," advised Fry. "For me it is not entirely clear what is the objective of sailing it. It seems to be a sport that is loosely and not overly professionally run for the benefit of the competitors, and if that is how it wants to be - that’s great and be done with it."

So if it wanted to take control of the professional side of the sport ISAF would need some objectives, some strategy and a business plan, continued Fry. The FIA, he said, aren’t the most popular people at times and sometimes teams don’t agree with what they are doing, but they are strong, have structure and generally do a good job.

"From the outside sailing doesn’t appear - barring the AC which appears to have problems of its own - to have any hierarchy or structure whatsoever, so if you are a sponsor or if you are interested in it commercially, if I wanted to sponsor a sailing event I wouldn’t know where to start. Apart from the America’s Cup there doesn’t seem to be much structure below that."

Also if sailing is to become professional as a sports entity then the people within it need to understand what they are up against from other leading sports and witness how the likes of F1 and football pitch to major companies like Vodafone.

Back to the rights issue and Scott McLeod observed that ISAF needed to demonstrate that there was value to be had form being "inside of the ISAF tent", by ISAF standing up to event organiser’s rights in a stronger way. He cited the example of going to a sports conference and coming across an individual who was attempting to sell sponsorship for the ‘World Cup of Ocean Racing’ - potentially a direct competitor to the Volvo Ocean Race. "The fact that the guy had gone and done this - it shouldn’t happen. It should be out that that you can’t do these things. You can’t start a motor race with the support of the FIA. Max Moseley will get out his whips and chains..!"

MacLeod advised Pels that the US Tennis Association might be a good model for ISAF. One side of the USTA runs the grass roots side of the sport in America - the clubs and the members, amateur players, etc - but alongside it they have a professional wing running the US Open, that nets $60 million a year.

According to Pels though it is unlikely they will set up an entirely separate structure to handle the commercial side of their operations within ISAF. He cited the reason as being that their remit was too broad. "If you talk about tennis you are talking about the same game. But we have professionals in the sport of sailing, surfing, kite surfing, ocean sailing, dinghy sailing and even record sailing, etc. So there are a lot of different things and if we want to manage all that then you need to have separate organisations for those areas and then you are on the wrong track."

But surely while it may be necessary to have separate departments or individuals running each of these parts of the sport, surely another entity within or alongside ISAF could handle all the commercial negotiations across the breadth of all these areas?

Sir Robin Knox-Johnston felt that there was no need for a separate organisation to be set up - ISAF just needed to be strengthened and made fit for purpose. Scott MacLeod thought likewise, adding that Pels was hamstrung by the leadership above him, working for a board of volunteers, which is where the real issue lay.

Looking at the sport from the bottom up, Jerome Pels pointed out that they were already in a strong position having set up the ISAF Sailor Classificiation. Thus they know who all the professional sailors are and have the ability to control them, should they wish to. Thus if a sailor got caught for dope in one event, then there is currently no opportunity for them to go racing as a professional elsewhere in sailing.

On a darker note, it was also mooted that having such a system would also be step towards a paid license system - for at present signing up to the classification system is completely free, even for the top professionals. To continue the Wild West analogy, Pels needs to buy bullets for his gun and these funds will obviously come partly from the events - where ISAF receive a slice of the action - but could also come from professional sailors by way of a license fee. One delegate from California gave the example of Nascar where this is the system, with a sliding scale of fees - free for amateurs, a nominal amount for part time professionals to up to around $5,000/year for the top players.

Pels enthusiastically agreed with this, but said that the reception to this would not be popular. "When we start doing this all hell will break loose - ‘what is ISAF doing?’ US Sailng tried doing this with their membership and they were slaughtered over this. But it is the only way. And if that doesn’t happen, we’ll just stay in the dark ages as we are. If not, we will have to do something about it."

The most succinct wrap-up from the panel discussion came from Scott MacLeod who said: "The only way that the sport of sailing from a commercial side is going to thrive is with the proper governance in place. ISAF has got to look at a business model and a strategy of how they’re going to get there and try and wean themselves off the Olympic money and get other revenue sources in to pay for these things. But you also have to have professionals in there to deal with where the sport is going on a commercial base and the events that are out there – we are willing to pay for that if the service is there. Then it will grow and when sponsors look at the sport, then they will make the investment. Right now they won’t make the investment. And it starts at the top at the America’s Cup and what is going on there and the lack of leadership to solve that problem is beyond me. It is quite sad and that is why I am out of the sport from a business standpoint."