Admiral's Cup - where now? Part One

But, as with a stock market crash, all it needed was someone to spook the herd and before you know it, the event had disappeared from the calendar.

So radical change is finally on the agenda for an organisation - the Admiral's Cup Management Committee (ACMC) - that has never shown much enthusiasm for it. And there's been much talk of which boat types and what event format are required to turn things around and put the regatta back on its pedestal.

But I think that before boats or racing are discussed, the organisers need to address a simple question at the heart of the event - who is the customer for the Admiral's Cup, who's picking up the tab? Confusion over this issue has led us down the sorry path to cancellation. But decide who you want to come to the event and the selection of boat type and format becomes much easier.

Looking at a grey world in black and white, there are two potential buyers of what the Admiral's Cup could have to offer. First is the traditional customer, the wealthy private owner - the prime constituency of the RORC's membership, the man (usually, let's face it) that the Club is set up to serve.

A quick glance around the sailing scene in 2001 will tell you all you need to know about what the vast majority of these customers are after. They want to steer their own boat, and they want to sail it with a crew largely made up of friends, though they're not adverse to having a couple of top class pro sailors aboard to help point the boat in the right direction and tweak the sail controls.

And they want the whole experience compressed and intensified, they are there for a good time, not a long time - short races, short regattas and glamorous venues. Classes and events that offer this set-up - Farr 40s and Key West are the paradigm - have boomed. The 2001 Admiral's Cup offered only one owner/driver class with pro-am crew restrictions, plus long races and a longer regatta. Thanks, but no thanks, was the response from the owners.

The second potential customer is the modern professional sailor and racing team manager. Examples are Grant Dalton and Ellen MacArthur, people who can put together the finance for a sailing campaign from the marketing budget of international companies.

What these people want is very simple - sufficient publicity to make the sports marketing dollars invested in the campaign money well spent. If this media return on the investment isn't there, then the sponsors won't come and neither will the pro teams.

The 2001 Admiral's Cup was within months of taking place and there was little or no confirmed media coverage. The normal British national newspaper column inches could be expected, and a UK sailing community riding on the crest of the Olympic and Kingfisher waves had managed to find sponsors for the home team.

But with no global television deal, no event website and no PR machine to crank up the anticipation and the ante, the rest of the world was struggling. Once again, thanks, but no thanks. The pro sailors have opted for the America's Cup, Volvo Ocean Race and the Tour Voile.

Offering little for either possible customer base, it's not surprising in retrospect that the regatta foundered. But to go forward the ACMC needs to make a simple choice - private owners or professional, sponsored teams? The two are not compatible, and a regatta tailored to one would look very different to an event designed for the other. To put the media coverage in place you need a whole bunch of stuff that makes the event unattractive to the vast majority of private owners. For starters there has to be a lengthy measurement process to ensure there are no horrible cheating scandals to disfigure the coverage, and you need an event that's weeks or months long to extract maximum media value from the cost of the campaigns.

Just look at the difference between the Farr 40s at Key West, and the America's Cup: five days versus five months; one-designs versus development class; pro-am eligibility rules versus highly paid professional teams. So what would you go for, the owners or the professionals?

Part Two tomorrow ...

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