America’s Cup: Court case reveals hostilities between Sir Ben Ainslie and Sir Jim Ratcliffe

Sir Ben Ainslie claims he was told Sir Jim Ratcliffe would “burn your house down” unless he handed over the team’s assets and intellectual property to the British billionaire’s Ineos empire.

The “hostile” threat was allegedly delivered by Jean-Claude Blanc and Rob Nevin, the chief executive and chairman of Ineos Sport, in Ainslie’s Barcelona office, in October 2024, just hours before Ainslie was due to try to make history in the America’s Cup against New Zealand.

Britain has never won the America’s Cup in its 175-year history and it was their first Cup match in 60 years. Ratcliffe, whose worth is valued at more than £13.5 billion ($30.9b), backed Ainslie’s campaign by pumping millions into the project to try and aid that effort.

“We have a phrase at Ineos: ‘scorched earth’,” Ainslie claims Nevin warned him. “It means that if you don’t give Jim what he wants, he will burn your house down.”

The claim is one of several extraordinary allegations made by the defence against a High Court action pursued by Ratcliffe’s Ineos, which is attempting to force Ainslie’s Athena Racing team to hand over the “£180m ($412.5m) boat” they built together for the last America’s Cup.

Ineos filed their claim in April, stating that “having provided approximately £174 million ($398.7m) of funding for the design, construction and testing of a racing yacht and related assets, the Claimant is entitled under the Agreement to ownership of those assets following its expiry.

“Wrongfully and in breach of contract, however, the Defendant has refused to transfer these assets to the Claimant and has wrongly disputed its obligation to do so”.

The defence filing, which The Telegraph has seen, was submitted last Thursday at the High Court. It lays bare the extent to which relations between Britain’s most successful sailor and Manchester United’s co-owner deteriorated during and after the 37th America’s Cup (AC37).

Athena Racing accuses Ratcliffe and Ineos of:

Ratcliffe’s ‘scorched earth’ mantra

Ainslie’s defence is filed against Ineos Racing Limited, although the four-time Olympic gold medallist states in the filing that “the Claimant [Ineos Racing] is ultimately controlled and directed, whether directly or indirectly, by Sir Jim Ratcliffe” and the Ineos Group.

The most explosive allegations in the filing come in a section entitled: “The Claimant does not come to equity with clean hands”.

In it, Athena claim that on October 12, 2024, hours before the first America’s Cup race, Blanc and Nevin went to see Ainslie in his office and said Ratcliffe would only continue to back future America’s Cup campaigns if he transferred “all of [the team’s] assets and intellectual property”.

If he refused, his team would be destroyed.

“Mr Nevin stated to Sir Ben: ‘This is what Jim wants. We have a phrase at Ineos: ‘scorched earth’. It means that if you don’t give Jim what he wants, he will burn your house down’ (or words to that effect).

“In response, Sir Ben attempted to defuse the situation by reminding Mr Nevin that the first AC37 race would be beginning shortly.

“Mr Nevin then reiterated and expanded upon his threat, explaining that the only instance in which Sir Jim had backed down from a dispute was one concerning the state of the People’s Republic of China.”

The filing, prepared by Meysan Partners UK LLP, adds that Ineos “must have been aware that it would distract Sir Ben from his preparation to the detriment of the Defendant [Athena], and to the detriment of the prospects of the America’s Cup being won”.

By this stage, Ainslie’s America’s Cup campaign was receiving prominent national coverage after Ineos Britannia became the first British team to win the Louis Vuitton Challenger Series.

In an exclusive interview with Telegraph Sport at the time, Ratcliffe said he was committed to another bid with Ainslie “regardless of the outcome” of the AC37 challenge.

But Ineos announced a split from Ainslie in January 2025, with Ratcliffe issuing a statement to say they “could not find agreement on terms to move forward” and instead announced plans to launch his own bid without Athena.

However, the latest documents now claim that the initial frictions between Athena and Ineos originated in May 2024, before the Barcelona showdown five months later where Nevin and Blanc allegedly confronted Ainslie.

The filing says; “the threat was made without any contractual basis, but as a hostile negotiating tactic” and described the “manner, time and terms in which the threat was made” as “unduly aggressive and uncommercial”.

Ineos ‘imprison Ainslie and colleagues with chains and padlocks’

The filing also includes an allegation of “false imprisonment”, in January last year, immediately after their split, when Ainslie and his Athena colleagues allegedly found themselves locked inside their own Northamptonshire offices by an Ineos employee and two security contractors who turned up at the premises.

Shortly after the termination of the agreement with Ineos on January 17, 2025, Athena allege that an Ineos employee, Raymond Fellows, turned up at their Turweston site in Northamptonshire with a security contractor and demanded that the staff present hand over all assets and leave the premises.

They declined. It is also claimed that the visitors demanded to search staff members’ bags as they left the premises at the end of the day, which was also rejected.

Fellows then allegedly turned up the next day with two security contractors and requested the keys for the site from the building’s landlord. This was also denied.

“Shortly thereafter, and in circumstances where the site was routinely locked from the inside, Mr Fellows and his associates proceeded to chain and padlock the doors to the Defendant’s site from the outside, and affixed ‘No Entry’ signs.

“In so doing, Mr Fellows and his associates, at all times acting on behalf of the Claimant, imprisoned the Defendant’s employees in the site without any lawful authority. In the premises, the Claimant committed the tort of false imprisonment.”

Ainslie and Matt Robinson, his CFO, allegedly managed to exit via a fire escape and persuade them to “remove chains and padlocks”, by telling them they were “intimidating the Defendant’s members of staff and causing health and safety risks”.

Ainslie says this act “was conducted without any contractual or other lawful basis”.

Toto Wolff’s Mercedes dragged into legal row

Athena’s former technical partners, Mercedes F1 – in which Ineos owns a one-third stake – have also been dragged into the row, with Ainslie accusing Toto Wolff’s team of a “breach of contract”, albeit they infer this was at the behest of Ineos.

Athena claim both Ineos and Mercedes F1 breached a non-compete clause by announcing a bid to challenge for the 38th America’s Cup (AC38) in Naples next year following Ineos’ split with Athena. That challenge has since been shelved. They cite Clause 4.2.5(ii) of their agreement, which states that if Ineos chose not to continue with Athena, “it undertook not to enter a team in any subsequent America’s Cup campaign or appoint any other third party to run or operate a team in any subsequent America’s Cup campaign”.

Athena also claims Mercedes F1 locked them out of their own Office365 IT system for five months, denying them access to emails and data, and “misappropriating and using the Defendant’s passwords to transfer several domain names”.

“MercedesF1 did not restore the Defendant’s access to its IT facilities until July 2025, following significant correspondence and the threat of injunctive relief by the Defendant,” Athena claimed in their filing.

Furthermore, Athena claim Mercedes F1 are still denying them access to their simulator, “which is believed to be held at [Mercedes F1’s] Brackley factory” in Northamptonshire, and other physical assets, in the build-up to AC38 in Naples next summer. Ainslie told The Telegraph last month that his team were competing in this America’s Cup with “one arm tied behind our back thanks to Ineos” because of the legal claim brought against Athena.

Athena Racing insist they own America’s Cup boat, not Ratcliffe

Much of the 41-page filing for the defence concerns the wording in the Agreement between the two parties regarding ownership of the assets, which effectively boils down to the Cup boat, the Ineos Britannia.

Ainslie’s team, now called GB1 and backed by private equity firm Oakley Capital, are planning to modify and use the boat in Naples next summer.

Athena are adamant that Ineos were always sponsors rather than owners of the team, and that any assets developed or bought using funds supplied by Ineos were owned by the team.

In their filing, they cite Clause 3.7.1 of the Partner Agreement which made a distinction between assets bought directly by Ineos and those bought using funding from Ineos: “[a]ny other assets of any sort acquired by Athena using (or in respect of)” the funding provided by the Claimant “shall be owned by Athena” (clause 3.7.1)“.

They add: “The clause was in absolute terms, and did not contain any temporal (or other) limitation”.

In their claim, Ineos do not dispute that Athena owned the boat during the term of the Cup, stating it was “commercially necessary or desirable that the assets acquired or under development for the purposes of AC37 should be owned by the Defendant during the currency of the AC37 campaign” as “this structure enabled the parties to obtain tens of millions of pounds’ worth of benefits and represented a key part of the funding of the campaign”.

There is also a lot of talk about ‘The Ineos Option’ which refers to Clause 4.2.3 of the Agreement, which gave Ineos the right to renew or extend the partnership at the end of each Cup cycle.

In the end, Ratcliffe chose not to take up that option, but there is a dispute over what that meant for the assets.

According to the terms of the agreement, Ineos was obliged to “cover… the costs involved in [the Defendant] winding down its operations and commercial commitments to a minimal level”.

It could do this through the sale of assets. That is, unless Athena was “able to find financial support or sponsorship for continuing the America’s Cup campaigns”.

Athena claims it never wound down its operations; therefore, “no obligation on the part of the Claimant to cover any such costs arose”.

Indeed, Athena says it “never had fewer than 38 staff” on its payroll and that Ainslie himself drew down £2.9 million ($6.639m) from his parent company Athena Holdco, to keep the team afloat while looking for new sponsors.

What happens next?

Ineos are likely to respond to the defence filing in the next month or so. It is unclear when the case will be heard, or even whether it will take place before next summer’s Cup.

Athena claims that Ineos “has not identified any financial or commercial interest in (much less a need for)” the AC75 boat, whereas it would “radically and irreparably harm the Defendant’s preparation and campaign for AC38” were it to be taken away from them.

A spokesperson for Athena Racing said: “Athena Racing will not be making any further comment. Our case is set out in the defence papers. Athena continues to focus on GB1’s preparations for the 38th America’s Cup in Naples next year for Britain.”

Ineos and Mercedes F1 have declined to comment.

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