Winner takes all?

In his latest diary OneWorld navigator Mark Chisnell questions whether this is helping the America's Cup

Oracle's recent announcement that BMW are joining them as a sponsor comes alongside a spate of recent articles in the press about how much trouble Formula One racing is in. The smaller teams are struggling, even closing in some cases, as the sponsorship dollars dry up. So it's no mean feat to get investment from one of F1 racing's major backers, through their involvement with the Williams team.

It looks like sailing in general, and the America's Cup in particular, is at one of those moments of both challenge and opportunity. The challenge being that there are a lot less sports sponsorship dollars washing around, and the opportunity is that the Cup is now being seen by the global brand names as a safe place to spend those dollars.

But America's Cup sponsorship is still a risky business, much more so than Formula One, because the Cup is a zero-sum game, winner takes all. Compared to the scale of the investment, the only significant yield in the coming America's Cup is the right to pick the site of the next defence. Let's face it, the major television networks are not exactly biting hands off to bid for the broadcast rights. And the other benefits, from the usual mechanics of marketing, corporate hospitality and the like, aren't making much of a dent when set against the amount of money being poured in to try and win this thing.

I don't think that this is good for the Cup - ask yourself how many successful businesses operate in a zero-sum game environment? Teams should be able to come up with a business plan that makes total sense to a hard-nosed, sailboat-hating investor. And to achieve that, the return from all our efforts needs to be shared out more evenly - just as in other pro sports.

Instead, there's a huge amount of money being spent and it's only going to be a good investment for one team. I suspect that as a result, it could get really nasty down in Auckland in the coming months (if it hasn't already) - I don't think this is going to be an edifying spectacle.

I should state that I'm not one of those people that believe that all the back-room politicking and courtroom drama is an asset to the event. Just because it always has been a part of the America's Cup doesn't mean it should, or needs to be. The politics may enliven the (dreary?) boat-racing for the aficionado, but that's just an argument for making the racing more interesting.

I'm pretty sure it's a turn-off for the wider potential audience. Save the politics for Washington, we're not saving the world from war or poverty - it's a sports event. What would Joe Public rather watch - Ronaldo putting two past Oliver Kahn, or some bloke standing outside an office block reporting on the latest case before the Arbitration Panel?

Changing the nature of the event from this desperate winner-takes-all set-up might remove a lot of the B#$! S*!$. If second place was nearly as financially beneficial as winning - rather than so far behind you can't even see it from there - then there's a lot less pressure on the players to adopt a win-at-absolutely-all-costs attitude. Maybe we'd even see sportsmanship make a comeback, wouldn't that be a thing...

Continued on page 2...