Swedish Match 40 - the practicalities

Tourmeister Scott MacLeod reveals how the new one design will be incorporated into the Swedish Match Tour

Yesterday we wrote about the new Pelle Petterson 40ft one design match racing boat. The Swedish Match Tour plan to use these fine vessels for all their events in the future and 'hurrah' say we to this, but carrying it out may not be entirely straightforward.

Octagon, the international sports marketing company who run the Swedish Match Tour, organised the short lived UBS Challenge which took place in Newport last year and they also run the Gold Cup in Bermuda. Otherwise the Tour piggybacks on top of existing events that have been running for a number of years. Mostly these use existing fleets of boats they regularly use, admittedly in some case not as state of the art as would be liked. Can the Tour simply stride in and change all the boats in other people's events? Who will own the boats?

Scott MacLeod, Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Octagon WorldWide, who is also Tour Director and effectively the main architect of the Swedish Match Tour, explains his concept.

The first thing he points out is that the new 40 footer, although largely his concept for the Tour, can be purchased by anyone. "We have a marketing and licensing agreement with Maxi Nimbus to build and market the boats on the open market as a 40ft one design match racer/club boat/fleet boat," he says.

At present a price for the boat has yet to be fixed but Lars Wiklund of Maxi Yachts told The Daily Sail it is likely to be 69,000 Euros. Pelle Wikman's company SailNet who are running the marketing of the 40 are also considering setting up one design rules for the boat for use outside of the Tour.

However the main focus for the boat is the Swedish Match Tour. The original plan was to have two boats finished for Marstrand. In the event only one is complete, and the goal, says MacLeod is to get eight boats that the Tour own and ship around between events. "The boat fits into a container on a trailer, there will be a storage container and probably a container with all the umpire boats in it. So it will be Swedish Match Tour in a box – ready to go…"

MacLeod says that this opens up a number of possibilities such as taking the Tour to new venues and markets where there might be a desire to hold a match racing event, but where there might not be the infrastructure or the boats to carry it out. He says he has a list of 20 potential venues and most recently has received a call from an interested party in Saudi Arabia. Of paramount important is ensuring that any new Tour events are run at a level as high as the flagship event of the Tour, the Swedish Match Cup in Marstrand. However at present MacLeod says there are no plans to change the events in the Tour.

Finance is currently in place to build the eight boats. The hulls will be branded by the events and the Tour. But before the boats are built Octagon must sell eight 'boat packages' that covers the running, maintenance and transportation costs for the boats between venues. The exact details of this have to be finalised but the package is expected to cost teams in the order of $100,000 per annum. "We are not trying to make money on this," says MacLeod. "Any profits will go back into prize money. Sell eight packages at just under $100,000 each and we think we’ll cover it." He believes that a teams' budget for the year to take part in all the events would be around $300,000. "Learn the umpires’calls and training your guys in match racing – that is a pretty low cost to do that," says MacLeod in full pitch mode.

The exact details of what a 'boat package' will include has yet to be finalised, but it is likely that it will be:

- use of the boat at all the Tour event
- invitations to all the Tour events
- branding on the sails (supplied by the Tour)
- display and hospitality at Tour events, ads in the program, etc.
- guaranteed TV exposure

At present if, for example, Alinghi turn up to an event the only way you would know they were Alinghi is from their clothing.

With these packages sold to eight teams and Tour events having 16 entries, the other eight boats will be sailed by a combination of invitees or those who have qualified to race. They will sail the same eight boats, but with tour or event branding on the sails and none of the other benefits.

Regarding the use of the new boat at Tour events MacLeod says he has got tentative agreements from all the organisers to the change in packaging to allow teams to control some of the sponsorship of the boats. "A lot of events have agreements with sponsors that would contradict what we are trying to do. So we are tyring to work through those issues right now and we are probably going out after this event with the packages for the teams."

The new boats will in some cases be a bonus to events, many of whom currently have to charter boats which are not as state of the art as they should be - the boats used for the Bermuda Gold Cup are an example - and possibly are not as equal as they should be.

Fundamental to the Tour's strategy is to tie up America's Cup campaigns. MacLeod sees the Tour as being the bridge which links America's Cups. The boats look like Mini ACC boats and now teams can get more branding on the boats it is more suitable for getting the partners of Cup teams involved with the Tour.

"We have had several conversation with the teams," says MacLeod of how he is progressing with this. "It is about how they amortise their cost to participate in the America’s Cup over four years to their sponsors. The next Cup is in 2007 so I'm say I’ve got 32 events happening between now and 2007. They’re televised, they’ve got spectators, they’re commercial, so let’s integrate that into your sponsorship packages..."

At present one America's Cup team - and it doesn't take too much imagination to think who - have told MacLeod that they'll take two. Others have indicated that they would also like to buy the boats for training purposes.

Sometime down the road MacLeod believes that the model might change so that owners of boats could sail them in Tour events, but at present that model doesn't work as the cost of moving a huge number of boats from venue to venue is prohibitive. Hence the plan is to just move their eight boats around between events.

In terms of a timescale MacLeod says he would like to introduce the eight boats into the European events in 2004 and "go global in 2005".

The introduction of the new boats will certainly make the Tour more professional and with at least two other new match racing one designs launched recently ( K-Yachting's 33 footer and the Italian boats used at Elba, the Blu Sail 24 Sport) the Swedish Match Tour are not alone in thinking that there is a market for match racing one designs.