Our ranking of the most influential players in global sailing over the last 12 months, ranked by experience, entrepreneurship, profile and achievement
20/ Peter Gilmour Four-time World Match Racing Tour champion In a sport full of versatile athletes there are perhaps none more so than Peter Gilmour. The Australian is an America’s Cup veteran who then began to ply his trade on the World Match Racing Tour, where his knowledge and experience became a vital tool for series organisers and event promoters. He is a four-time
champion in the series and remains on the board; most notably, he was one of the key advisors in the development of the Monsoon Cup in Malaysia where an area of wasteland was turned into a thriving world-class marina. Few sailors have as effective a transition from athlete to trusted authority on all areas of growing the sport as Gilmour. Even fewer have the kind of all-round knowledge of sailing.
19/ Angus Buchanan Co-managing director, The Sports Consultancy While Angus Buchanan’s The Sports Consultancy works, as the name suggests, across a wide variety of sports, sailing has always been its backbone. Buchanan and his co-managing director Robert Datnow have been responsible for many of the sport’s major commercial deals since 2006 – around UK£200 million worth, according to the best estimates.
Indeed, it was a major sailing sponsorship which brought Buchanan and Datnow together. Former sailor Buchanan, who once raced the Trophée Jules Verne before training as a lawyer, was the commercial director of the Volvo Ocean Race when Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean movie branded a boat. Datnow, himself a lawyer, helped to provide the legal framework for the deal. The Sports Consultancy now works with sailing events and stopovers
around the world, delivering value and, importantly, clarity for clients in what remains a fragmented sport.
18/ Ernesto Bertarelli Founder, Alinghi Swiss billionaire Ernesto Bertarelli’s name will forever be associated with the America’s Cup. His Alinghi team successfully challenged for the Auld Mug in 2003 and then he put together the organisation which staged what was, by some distance, the most successful Cup yet, in Valencia in 2007. The love affair may have soured a
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touch following the legal wrangling post-Valencia, a bitter battle which ultimately saw Bertarelli lose out to Larry Ellison’s Oracle team, but the once all-conquering Alinghi team is still competing in the Extreme Sailing Series. It first took part in 2008, as practice for what turned out to be the legally dominated 33rd Cup, but the series currently forms the bulk of Alinghi’s
racing activities. Rumours, however, have suggested a possible tilt at the Volvo Ocean Race in 2014-15. Bertarelli retains his influence by dint of the fact that he has the pedigree and the capital to vault back to the very top tier of the sport almost when he pleases. The clever money would be that he will do just that, at some point. There are, after all, still scores to be settled.
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World Match Racing Tour The Alpari World Match Racing Tour began its 14th year on the water in 2013. Executive director James Pleasance, coming to the end of his first 12 months at the helm, offers a guide through what is now the world’s leading monohull sailing series. The 2013 Alpari World Match Racing Tour, the 14th edition of the ISAFsanctioned series, got underway on 15th May in Langenargen, Germany. The six-stage competition has been the premier monohull sailing series in the world since the organisers of the America’s Cup – for which the tour had often been considered a training ground – decided to switch to wing sail catamarans in 2010. Each stage is contested by a fleet of eight permanent teams, known
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as ‘tour card holders’, plus four additional teams, two of which earn a place via the qualifying events and two of which are ‘wildcards’ – often made up of local sailors that attract media interest. Teams use identical supplied racing yachts at each location – though the class of boat varies between each event – which, in theory, creates a competition based on individual skill and sailing ability, rather than technological or financial advantage. This format is a defining characteristic of the tour according James Pleasance, who took the top job as executive director of the series in August 2012 after a decade as one of its directors. “One of the USPs of the tour is that it comes down to a battle of skill rather than design, technology or money,” says Pleasance during an interview at the
Alpari World Match Racing Tour’s headquarters in London in late June. “Every crew has to compete on the same boat and throughout racing the crews rotate between the boats, so you can’t pick a favourite for the day. It’s purely down to the skill of the sailor, not the design or technology of the boat. “There’s always going to be slight differences because these aren’t just boats that are pulled out once a year for a week – these are used for corporate sailing,” he adds. “Most events will take about a week to properly measure [the yachts], weigh them. They completely strip them down, there’s no instrumentation at all.”
Alpari: in at the deep end Having been title sponsored by tobacco and disposable lighter
Events and sports travel specialists Travel Places are official tour suppliers. Furthermore, each event organiser has the ability to sign local sponsors, which pushes the total number of partners associated with the series close to 350 each year. As such, the tour and its individual events generate combined revenue of over US$15 million annually. The tour also sealed a long-term partnership with media giant IMG in May 2013 for the distribution of highlights and a daily news release (VNR), while independent production company Red Handed TV has been involved for a number of years. “Last year there was good demand; there were over 13 or 14 broadcasters that were taking the live coverage from the events,” recalls Pleasance. “Sailing has always unfortunately suffered at the hands of the weather, because if there’s not wind it can limit the live action, particularly when you’re live for two hours. “It’d be fair to say we’re stronger on the distribution of our highlights and that’s something we put a lot of time and investment into,” he adds. “Last year we invested significantly in broadcasting every event on the tour
live, which was something that we were not able to do this year from a financial point of view.”
Teams
Pindar, which came out of Andrew Pindar, the print company,” explains Pleasance. “GAC Pindar is now a marine leisure division of GAC Logistics. Ian has those as title sponsor but he also has some peripheral sponsors, clothing and such, but GAC Pindar essentially fund him to compete on the tour. In addition to that, they win the prize money.”
to be crowned tour champion in 2009. The tour’s title sponsor Alpari first partnered the Kiwi team in a short-term deal in December 2012, renaming it the Alpari Racing Team for December’s Monsoon Cup. Four months later, in a joint announcement that saw the forex trader become the principal partner of Premier League side West Ham United, Alpari expanded its sponsorship of Minoprio’s team to become the title sponsor for the duration of the 2013 season. “[Adam Minoprio] now has funding,” says Pleasance. “If he competes at other events I believe he still may be under BlackMatch, but as far as we’re concerned on the tour he and his team are Team Alpari FX.”
GAC Pindar Sitting atop the tour standings midway through 2013, GAC Pindar, skippered by defending champion Ian Williams, were looking for a record fifth title. The team – who also enter a boat in the Extreme Sailing Series – are a leading force commercially too, with a family of partners that includes Musto clothing, Bollé sunglasses and Swiss watch manufacturer Armin Strom. “[Ian Williams] has a title sponsor in GAC Pindar, which is the partnership between GAC, the logistics firm, and
Team Alpari FX Skippered by New Zealand’s Adam Minoprio, Team Alpari FX debuted under their current name in 2013, having previously competed as BlackMatch Racing. The team were founded in 2005 by Minoprio, who went on to become the youngest sailor
Commercial structure The tour’s current prize purse stands at over US$1.5 million, with an additional US$500,000 bonus pool allocated to the eight tour card holders at the end of each year. In turn, each of the permanent entries pays a US$55,000 fee to compete. The distribution of the bonus pool sees the fifth-placed team receive US$55,000, essentially covering their tour fee, while the higher-placed teams receive a larger share of the spoils. Trying to put a figure on the cost of entry to the tour depends, Pleasance says, on whether a team is “flying economy or business class”. “There’s various levels which one could afford,” he explains, “but as a ballpark you’d be looking around the US$100,000 mark per year for a team, almost as a minimum, to cover all reasonable costs. That doesn’t assume that every sailor is being paid – if you have paid sailors on your crew those costs increase. So sponsorships should look at covering that amount and some.”
Now in its 14th season, the ISAF-sanctioned Alpari World Match Racing Tour became the leading monohull sailing series when the America’s Cup switched to wing sail catamarans
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manufacturer Swedish Match, the tour, which received ‘special event’ status from the ISAF in 2006, signed a multi-million dollar title sponsorship deal with Alpari in February 2012. The online forex trading services firm’s five-year agreement saw the series rebranded as the Alpari World Match Racing Tour and provided a welcome cash injection ahead of last year’s eight-event competition. “I think the synergy between what we do on the tour and what Alpari does as a business is very closely aligned – it’s not about design and technology, it’s all about the skill of the sailor or the skill of the trader, competing on a equal platform,” explains Pleasance. “They’re hugely important to us. They’ve allowed us to step up our game; they’ve provided very valuable funding to allow us to do a number of things on the tour, from TV to marketing initiatives as well.” In addition to Alpari, the series has a stable of tour-wide sponsors that includes British carmaker Lotus, London-based luxury jewellery manufacturers Garrard and technical sailing and fashion brand Pelle P. Online event platform Livestream
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Eight permanent ‘tour card holder’ teams are joined at each event by two wildcard entries and two teams who have progressed through qualifiers
US One Sailing At the other end of the commercial spectrum sit the likes of new tour card entry Taylor Canfield and his US One Sailing team. The US Virgin Islands-born, Chicago-dwelling 24-year-old shot to prominence in 2012, claiming first place in the tour’s penultimate event, the Argo Group Gold Cup, and the Monsoon Cup season finale. Canfield is currently the sailing director at Chicago Match Race Center and was ranked ninth in the ISAF open rankings in mid-July. His team count Musto clothing, Line Honors yacht racing outfitters and
Venues 2013: a streamlined calendar The 2013 Alpari World Match Racing Tour was scheduled to touch down in Germany, Korea, Sweden, the US and Bermuda before its season-ending showpiece, the Monsoon Cup, from 2nd to 7th December in Malaysia. The
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The remaining five tour cards belong to the Stena Sailing Team, skippered by Sweden’s Johnie Berntsson, Keith Swinton’s Black Swan Racing Team, the Phil Robertson-led Waka Racing
Team, the eWork Sailing Team skippered by Bjorn Hansen, and Pierre-Antoine Morvan’s French entry, the Vannes Agglo Sailing Team. Meanwhile, a host of other teams fight it out for spots on the series proper via the qualifying events. For example, David Gilmour, skipper of Australia’s Team Gilmour, qualified for the 2013 Korea Match Cup after taking victory against Jeremy Koo’s MAS Koo Racing Team in late April, while Staffan Lindberg and his Alandia Sailing Team won a place at the 2013 Stena Match Cup Sweden after winning the GKSS Spring Cup in Gothenburg in May.
2013 calendar was two events lighter than in 2012 – the Dutch Match Cup in Lelystad and the St Moritz Match Race in Switzerland were cancelled after they failed to achieve adequate commercial funding. “It was very simple: they had secured some government funding that wasn’t ready for this year,” Pleasance explains. “As I understand, it’s been agreed but it’s likely to be in place for next year, not this year.
“Each event has its own responsibility to put the event on and to raise the appropriate funding,” he adds. “What does it cost to run an event? If I was to put a number on it, the cost of running a reasonable match racing event that would be part of the tour, including the necessary fees and the prize money, would be from three quarters of a million US dollars upwards. Some of the events on the tour have budgets significantly
sports technology firm Drift among their ‘gold’ sponsors. Says Pleasance: “You’ve got Taylor Canfield, a young up-and-coming sailor out of the US Virgin Islands, who has some sponsorship but not at the level of some of the other teams. So the level of sponsorship is at varied levels across the eight teams.”
And the rest
Events James Pleasance had been a director of the Alpari World Match Racing Tour for a decade when he took over as executive director in August 2012
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greater than that, particularly the Stena Match Cup Sweden and the Monsoon Cup. “In the past we’ve talked about getting 15-plus events but I think we’ve got to be realistic. I’d like to see more than ten events. We’re working on trying to secure new events for 2014, we’re looking actively in Australasia, we’re also looking at increasing our footprint in Asia. We’ve been doing a lot of research in Latin America, particularly in the run-up to the 2016 Olympics.”
Match Race Germany: Langenargen, Germany “We start in Germany purely because of the dates of the event,” says Pleasance. “We run on a calendar year and Germany therefore, by default, becomes the first event of the season in May. “If we were to secure an event – and we are talking to some events in the southern hemisphere – and the dates lend themselves a lot more to the beginning of our year, so January, February, it might be that we have a new curtain-raiser event; that’d be a fantastic opportunity.
“There’s no agreement per se for Germany to be the starters, it’s purely done on the calendar.” The German event, contested on Lake Constance at the northern foot of the Alps, joined the tour in 2000 and currently supplies teams with Bavaria 40S racing yachts. It attracts in excess of 30,000 spectators each year and added Adidas as its clothing partner for 2013. Meanwhile, MHP-A Porsche Company partnered the event for the third consecutive year in 2013. “Match Race Germany has a combination of funding; largely corporate sponsorship, they do a lot of hospitality,” says Pleasance. “A lot of it’s through corporate sponsors and much less so through tourism and government funding.”
Korea Match Cup: Gyeonggi, South Korea “[The Korea Match Cup] is a unique event and it’s very heavily funded by the local government, the Gyeonggi province, as part of a significant redevelopment of the region,” says Pleasance of a stop which was added to the tour in 2008 and uses KM36 boats. Hosted by the Jeongok Marina
in the Gyeonggi-do province and run in conjunction with an onshore sailing festival, the event attracted over 160,000 visitors in 2013. “There’s a lot of reclaimed land and the new yacht club that they’ve built this year is part of an ongoing initiative to increase the marine tourism waterfront development within Korea,” adds Pleasance. “It’s largely government-funded, although they have corporate funding through the likes of Hyundai. Operationally for us it has its challenges, but at the same time, as the tour, we move around to all the events, so we will take in the TV team, we’ll fly in photographers, writers, so we have our own on-site presence.”
Stena Match Cup Sweden: Marstrand, Sweden A cornerstone of the tour, the Swedish leg of the series – which supplies sailors with DS37 Match Racer boats – has been on the calendar since 2000 and attracts over 150,000 people each year. Stena agreed a five-year extension to its title sponsorship in December 2012, while Turkish Airlines and logistics company DB Schenker signed up to
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Caption
Forex brokerage Alpari signed a five-year deal to title sponsor the tour in February 2012, its first major partnership in sailing
Caption
sponsor the Royal Gothenburg Yacht Club-hosted event in February and May 2013 respectively. “Commercially they have well over 30 corporate partners, including Stena as the title sponsors,” explains Pleasance. “For a corporate sponsorship model, Sweden I would say has the largest number of corporate sponsors. That’s a fantastic example of how successful that can be. “They do a lot of hospitality. You see similar examples in the likes of Formula One – they really set the benchmark for hospitality and what can be done at not only tour events but at sailing events generally. They entertain thousands of guests during the week. That’s obviously a good revenue source.”
Chicago Match Cup: Chicago, USA Raced on Tom28 Max racing yachts at the end of Navy Pier in the heart of the city, Chicago’s tour event was first held in 2012. “They’ve run a very successful match race academy there for a number of years, together with local match racing events, so this was a natural extension for them to join the tour,”
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insists Pleasance. “They weren’t securing the boats for the very first time.” Asked about the benefits of having a US leg, Pleasance says: “It’s a huge boost for us. Many years ago we had a one-off event in San Francisco, the Allianz Cup in 2006, but Chicago is really the first time the tour’s had a US leg. It’s something that I would like to build on with additional events in the US.” The event carries a prize purse of US$100,000 and was expected to attract well over 250,000 spectators in 2013 as a result of being held in conjunction with the Tall Ships Chicago 2013 Festival. Organisers
have tied up media partnerships with CSN Chicago and Michigan Avenue magazine, while Choose Chicago is the event’s tourism partner and W Hotels also backs the event. “I’d love to see another event in the US,” concludes Pleasance, “perhaps on the west coast, perhaps using the momentum from this year’s America’s Cup in the likes of San Francisco.”
Argo Group Gold Cup: Hamilton, Bermuda The series’ penultimate leg, contested on International One Design (IOD)
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2013 Venues 15th-20th May: Match Race Germany – Langenargen, Germany 28th May-2nd June: Korea Match Cup – Gyeonggi-do, South Korea 1st-6th July: Stena Match Cup Sweden – Marstrand, Sweden 6th-11th August: Chicago Match Cup – Chicago, USA 7th-13th October: Argo Group Gold Cup – Hamilton, Bermuda 2nd-7th December: Monsoon Cup – Kuala Terengganu, Malaysiaw
boats, is an original founding member of the tour and one of the oldest match racing events in the sport. In addition to the Argo Group, the insurance underwriter that agreed a two-year extension to its title sponsorship in March 2012, the Royal Bermuda Yacht Club-organised Gold Cup also counts
reinsurance firms Aon Benfield, Guy Carpenter and RenaissanceRe among its sponsors. “Sailed in the very old 50-year-old designs, International One Design boats, [the Argo Group Gold Cup] really gives the sailors a test of their skill,” says Pleasance. “I think they look forward to it,” “Obviously it’s a beautiful place to go. The skills required to sail the IODs is very different to the other boats that they compete in on the tour, but to me that’s one of the charms and the challenges of what we do on the tour, rather than taking your boat to each event. Obviously, cost-wise, operationally, it has its benefits as well.”
Monsoon Cup: Kuala Terengganu, Malaysia “Why is it called the Monsoon Cup and why does it take place during the monsoon season?” asks Pleasance. “It was largely to promote tourism to that part of Malaysia in the off-seasons as well. And it has worked; the growth of Terengganu from 2005 to present day, with the airport over five times the size that it was and the number of tourists and international planes that are in
and out, is significant. A lot of that has definitely been down to the exposure of the Monsoon Cup.” Run by the Ri-Yaz Heritage Marina Resort & Spa and contested on F36 yachts, the Monsoon Cup is the season’s finale and, with a prize purse of approximately US$475,000, the championship’s most lucrative stage. It was won by wildcard entry Taylor Canfield in 2012 and is sponsored by Malaysia Airlines, Telekom Malaysia Berhad (TM), KFC and Sime Darby Motors along with support from the Ministry of Youth & Sports Malaysia and 1 Malaysia, a government-run social welfare initiative. “[The Monsoon Cup] is largely funded by the state of Terengganu, as part of a huge property, waterfront and marine tourism development in that part of Malaysia,” says Pleasance, “which involved building a purpose-built fourstorey regatta centre, which has provided the platform for the Monsoon Cup. “It’s an event that the sailors look forward to, it takes place in some very challenging conditions, which is the monsoon itself, and there’s a lot of prize money at stake. It’s the event that every team on the tour really aspires to win at the end of the season.”
Teams compete in identical boats at each leg of the tour, but each local organiser is left to decide on the make of the fleet
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