Decision to stage America’s Cup in Barcelona vindicated, Team NZ says

Saturday, 20 July 2024

Grant Dalton said being in Barcelona means they’re able to do a “range of things we would not have been able to do (in New Zealand).'

Todd Niall has covered and attended six America’s Cup regattas starting with the 2000 defence.

Team New Zealand says its ability to fully fund both its defence of the America’s Cup, and a significantly larger event than previously, has vindicated its decision to stage it in Barcelona.

The team picked up a significant contribution towards its defence, in the deal struck with Spain’s second largest city, and the expanded 2024 event is also now fully funded.

The four-time cup winner took a controversial decision in 2021 to stage its fourth defence not in home waters, because it feared both the event funding, and team’s sponsorship would fall well short.

Barcelona won a year-long bidding process, after the defender decided not to accept an offer from the government of $99 million in cash and kind, to host the event again in Auckland.

The team’s chief executive Grant Dalton, in an interview with Stuff five weeks before racing begins in Barcelona, said the decision to go offshore had paid off.

Team NZ boss Grant Dalton says the decision to stage the America’s Cup in Spain has been vindicated.

Dalton said at the time the home-or-away decision was made, he believed a competitive defence needed a budget significantly bigger than the $50m likely in sponsorship revenue he anticipated if the team sailed in Auckland.

On the event side, the offer from the government and Auckland Council included $30m in cash, and the rest in services, while Dalton believed a budget, including other sponsorship of around $100m was required.

Dalton said he understood the government’s position, and in 2021 told Stuff he accepted it.

“I have been watching the nurses’ strike, and the floods, and thought that these are real priorities – the Covid response etc – and what they have put up [as an offer] is completely reasonable,” he told Stuff in 2021.

Dalton said a month before the Barcelona kick-off, that by going to Europe the event had expanded, to include a Womens’ and Youth America’s Cup, and an E-sport competition.

That had taken the cost up by $20m, and that budget had been fully met.

The team’s hosting deal with Barcelona saw the city provide a fee, an undisclosed portion of which went a long way to meeting the anticipated cost of mounting a defence against well-heeled challengers.

Barcelona local media have reported the bid cost 70 million Euro.

“We’ve been completely vindicated,” Dalton said.

“Not only in funding the team to a competitive level, but also fulfilling our belief in diversity with the womens’ and youth cups, the Hydrogen chase boat programme and E-sports,” he said.

Dalton, who heads both the sailing team and the separate event arm, said financially “I don’t think we realised how bad it was going to get in New Zealand.”

“We could never have expected taxpayers to put up the money, ' Dalton told Three News in an interview in July.

'If you win the event like we have, it costs NZ$100million just to run the event, and in New Zealand, that would be impossible to raise,' he said.

The team. Like most of its rivals, is sensitive about revealing budgets. At the April 2024 launch in Auckland of its race boat Taihoro, it wasn’t prepared to talk numbers.

The team’s chairman Bob Field, the former head of long-time sponsor Toyota New Zealand, would say only that the boost to coffers from the Barcelona deal was “substantial”

Field said with rivals partnering with team’s from motor racing’s Formula One, and with backing that “dwarfs” the defender’s own funding, the Barcelona move enabled it to lift its game.

Team New Zealand sailing their AC75 for the America's Cup for the first time.

He told an audience of several hundred, the team remained Kiwi-based, with 90% of its funding from offshore, and 75% of it spent in New Zealand, making it a “win-win” for the local economy.

Dalton said the team would not be making a surplus out of the 2024 defence, unlike the 2007 defender Alinghi, which ended up with such a big surplus from the Valencia event, that it shared profits with the challengers. Team New Zealand, the runner-up, earned a multi-million dollar payout.

The decision to shift the next defence away from Auckland, after winning there in 2021, did not go down well with Auckland mayor Phil Goff, whose council had spent $113m on waterfront infrastructure used by the event, and which remains in place for other future uses.

The then prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, said everyone was keen to see the defence in New Zealand, but the Government was not prepared to pay too high a price.

Auckland businessman Mark Dunphy launched a campaign to keep the defence in Auckland, claiming he and other backers could raise $80m, but the sources and certainty of the money could not be demonstrated, and the group never met with Team New Zealand.

A preliminary series including Team New Zealand and all five challengers, begins on August 22, with the regatta reaching the cup match itself in October.