In a 2014 interview with Scuttlebutt’s Craig Leweck, Russell Coutts talked about how the commercialisation of the America’s Cup would drive the decision making. The (US) broadcaster, rather than the teams, would set the dates for the Match. This in fact happened when NBC changed the originally selected date for the Match by one week, to fill the gap left in their June schedule when they lost the US Open golf tournament to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Sports. Another of Coutts’s expressed objectives was that the America’s Cup World Series would count towards qualification and would include only teams with enough financial backing to be competitive through a full campaign. Both of those goals have been achieved. Coutts also wanted to shorten the main event. In 2013, the “Summer of Racing” stretched over three months, but when only three challengers had the financial resources to build an AC72, San Francisco and ACEA were left with a series of one boat sailovers and lopsided matches leading to the foregone conclusion of New Zealand’s victory in the Louis Vuitton Cup. For 2017, Coutts wanted the schedule shortened. Again, this has been achieved, although the 2017 race calendar still stretches over 32 days – twice as long as the Olympics and a day longer than the 32-team football World Cup.

Commercialisation continues to be top of mind among the teams. Ben Ainslie and his CEO Martin Whitmarsh have both spoken in the UK press about discussions among the teams aimed at shortening the cup cycle to two years and holding the next Match in 2019, with teams committing in advance. The AC Class yachts from 2017 would be used for the America’s Cup World Series. The perennial desire for more challengers remains part of the equation, with each challenger holding a World Series event during the two year run up to the Match. The article citing Ainslie and Whitmarsh resurrected the idea of having only the top four teams from the World Series advance to the final challenger selection series in the venue of the Match, thereby increasing the importance of the World Series.

The 2017 America’s Cup has attracted sponsorship from Louis Vuitton and BMW plus an impressive list of well-heeled Bermudian companies. Teams sponsors come from industries including airlines, financial services, the autos, IT, high tech and, of course, luxury goods. Setting event dates, venues and competitors in advance should make it easier to attract longer term sponsorship.

As usual, the devil is in the details. Iconic venues have provided dramatic backdrops for the America’s Cup World Series, but trying to fit a racing schedule into a short TV window will always be weather dependent and risky. Logic dictates that in order to get commitments for a 2019 cycle, a Protocol would need to be negotiated in advance. Using the World Series to select the semifinalists for challenger selection would require a defined format and scoring system. Would the World Series remain telegenic fleet races?  Self-interest would then lead a challenger that had locked up one of the playoff spots to match race dangerous rivals to the back of the fleet in the remaining races.  Racing AC Class yachts in the World Series while trying to expand the number of teams poses its own dilemma. New teams would need AC Class yachts for the World Series. Existing teams could sell their 2017 boats or their designs, but one way or another, more AC Class yachts would need to be built. How would a new team be scored if their race yacht was not ready for the early World Series events? All these race yachts would spend time in transit between World Series venues. Would the protocol allow teams to build additional AC Class yachts? How many? What about modifications? Will the not-a-surrogate AC45X “sport / turbo” boats continue to be used as test platforms? Will the 2019 venue be agreed, or at least narrowed down to a known list of possible locations, in advance of the 2017 Match?

The devil is in the details, and the biggest detail is that Team New Zealand appears not to be on board. Bluntly put, as long as the Kiwis are still in the competition, none of these ideas can be firmly committed to new teams, to sponsors or to broadcasters. The business of the America’s Cup remains very tricky.