Plans have been announced to continue the growth of the America’s Cup and its continued commercialisation following the completion of the latest event hosted in Barcelona.
The Cup was won by Emirates Team New Zealand which made history by winning the event three times in a row completing one of the most successful America’s Cup campaigns in history.
The event, which took place over 59 days between 22 August and 19 October 2024, attracted 2.56 million attendees.
And CEO of Emirates Team New Zealand, Grant Dalton, says there is now an unprecedented opportunity for the continued growth of the event.
“The Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup has confirmed the America’s Cup as one of the unique properties in international sport, so it is our objective to build on the success of AC37 and continue the growth we have been seeing since we first won the America’s Cup in 2017,” he said.
“We are looking to increase audience and engagement across different regions, territories and demographics.”
And he said that through hosting the event in Barcelona, the event has seen significant growth across many fronts via the success of the Puig Women’s America’s Cup, the Unicredit Youth America’s Cup as well as the AC Sailing E-Sport World Championship alongside taking huge strides in the innovation and development of sustainable marine power with the hydrogen powered foiling chase boats.
“As a result of these successes we know we have a number of valuable properties that we wish to continue building,” explained Grant.
“We are keeping an open mind on how best to achieve this with a venue, or different venues, that can super charge the 38th America’s Cup with increased global footprint, more teams and increased overall expansion opportunities.”
Available infrastructure space
This will be difficult based on the available infrastructure space in Barcelona, and in addition the collective teams would like to see continued commercial growth of the event, in line with what is seen in other leading global sports, he said.
Attendees and people enjoying the event ranged from the local community, national and international visitors coming into Barcelona.
The attendees were counted on a daily basis by the Host Partners Group with ACE Barcelona SL and the host partners across the America’s Cup venues including 243 visiting superyachts.
“These numbers are well aligned with those that were projected and estimated before the event and from initial indications we know we are well on track to reaching our growth targets of a 50% increase on total broadcast and media audience from the 36th America’s Cup,” explained Grant.
