{"id":159139,"date":"2025-07-18T06:48:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-18T05:48:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/?p=159139"},"modified":"2025-07-22T11:02:43","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T10:02:43","slug":"this-americas-cup-dispute-could-lead-down-a-difficult-alley-matt-sheahan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/americas-cup\/this-americas-cup-dispute-could-lead-down-a-difficult-alley-matt-sheahan-159139","title":{"rendered":"‘This America’s Cup dispute could lead down a difficult alley\u2019 \u2013 Matt Sheahan"},"content":"Following a statement from Alinghi<\/a> and co-ordinated statements of support from Athena Racing<\/a> and NYYC American Magic<\/a> yesterday, Thursday 29 May, Team New Zealand<\/a> have responded with their own statement on the 38th America's Cup<\/a> venue late Thursday UK time.\r\n\r\nAlinghi accused Team New Zealand of selling 'something they do not own the rights to'<\/a> after the Kiwis announced the venue for the 38th America's Cup<\/a> apparently without approval of Athena Racing, the Challenger of Record.\r\n\r\nHowever, Team New Zealand claims that the Challenger of Record (CoR) signed a 'Memorandum of Understanding' when they signed up to be the Challenger of Record<\/a> for the next America's Cup<\/a> at the conclusion of the last event in 2024.\r\n\r\nThe statement from Team New Zealand came in two parts. The first read:\r\n\r\n'The Defender, as per the Deed of Gift has the right and responsibility to choose the venue and the Memorandum of Understanding signed with the Challenger of Record at the conclusion of the 37th America\u2019s Cup also gives that full right and obligation to the Defender.\r\n\r\nArticle continues below...<\/em>\r\n\r\n[collection]\r\n\r\n'The Defender remains committed to work with the teams to create a partnership for the future America\u2019s Cups.'\r\n\r\nThis was followed some hours later by a second statement which read:\r\n\r\n'Further clarification on today\u2019s earlier statement from Emirates Team New Zealand regarding the agreed responsibility of the Defender on selecting the Host Venue of the 38th America\u2019s Cup across all events including the Challenger Selection Series. The MOU with the Challenger of Record also says:\r\n\r\n\u201cThe Venue for the Match and for the preceding CSS will be determined and announced by the AC38 Defender within eight months of the AC37 Final Race. The final dates for the Match and the preceding CSS will be announced within a further two months of the Venue announcement.\u201d'\r\n\r\nAs the back-and-forth continues the wording of these tit-for-tat statements is starting to look increasingly legal.\r\n\r\nThe America's Cup has long been a home to legal battles and quite how this 'Memorandum of Understanding' apparently signed by British Challenger of Record squares with the famous America's Cup Deed of Gift \u2013 the 1882 primary document that governs the rules to challenge for the America's Cup \u2013 could well be one for the lawyers to decide.\r\n\r\n[jwplayer key=\"S1tkWM25\"]\r\n\r\n
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","excerpt":{"rendered":"

Unsightly and unnecessary public spat that has little to do with sailing… or another example of the extraordinary lengths some teams will go to win the America\u2019s Cup? Whatever your view, the recent public exchanges between the Defender and the Challenger of Record are illustrations of how the Cup\u2019s capacity to both incense and entertain also demonstrate how much the Auld Mug means to those who want it in their trophy cabinet. One thing is clear, the 38th America\u2019s Cup has started. The trouble is that the dispute could lead the next cycle down a difficult alley with the risk of yet another Cup re-set. By the time you read this, things may have developed further \u2013 hopefully for the better with both sides getting on. But the dialogue has been getting feisty. On the face of it, the proposed format for the next America\u2019s Cup in the draft protocol as released by the Kiwis had several interesting new aspects. The next generation of AC75s will have no cyclors or grinders and rely solely on electric power. The crew will be reduced from eight to six and will include a female sailor and an under-25-year-old. A seventh position would be available too as a guest slot. It\u2019s also proposed there will be a spending cap of \u20ac60million, around half of what was previously spent. Article continues below… But perhaps one of the biggest and most significant changes this time around is the formation of the AC Partnership (ACP) where the Defender, the Challenger of Record and \u2018other prospective AC38 competitors\u2019, agree to work collaboratively to create the next America\u2019s Cup. The responsibility of this group includes the format of racing, the commercial rights, the selection of host cities and so on. And while I\u2019m led to believe there have been plenty of contentious issues during the negotiation of the yet-to-be-signed new Protocol, it was this area that seemed to be at the heart of the recent terse statements from both sides. The announcement of Naples as the venue for the next America\u2019s Cup came before the Challengers had formally agreed it (normally the venue is revealed after the Protocol has been agreed as this sets out the overall format of the event). So, given the new ACP arrangement where all parties were responsible for the venue, three of the Challengers \u2013 Athena Racing, American Magic and Alinghi \u2013 voiced their concerns that the Defender wasn\u2019t playing by the draft rules that they were still working on. There\u2019s more detail in the dispute, but my suspicion is that the Challengers\u2019 reactions are an indication of a broader concern over how the Defender is behaving this early in the Cup cycle and that they need to nip this in the bud. For me, the bigger issue is the way in which this dispute has polarised the teams. On one side are the British \u2013 as Challenger of Record \u2013 the American and Swiss teams. On the other the Kiwis, the Italians \u2013 …Continue reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":449,"featured_media":159140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[687],"tags":[569,1633],"review_manufacturer":[],"acf":[],"introduction":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159139"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/449"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159139"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":159142,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159139\/revisions\/159142"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159139"},{"taxonomy":"review_manufacturer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review_manufacturer?post=159139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}