Part two of our look into the America’s Cup structure, and what it all means. Part one is here.
After the Emirates Team New Zealand team won the 2017 Cup in Bermuda ETNZ boss Grant Dalton managed to take the leading role in ACPI. Eight years later, in August 2025, Dalton (representing the Defenders) and Ben Ainslie (for the Challenger of Record) announced a new entity, the America’s Cup Partnership. The old ACPI was no more.
ACP is comprised of all the participating syndicates in the next series, and assumes full commercial control of the Cup. It defines its powers thus: “ACP manages everything from ownership, administration, and exploitation of rights, contracts, revenues, assets, personnel and activities necessary to the effective conduct of the events.” In other words, the whole AC shooting match, apart from the sailing activities of individual teams.
At the time, there were indications that the Deed of Gift might need to be changed to accommodate the ACP structure. That has not happened, nor have the terms of the ACP partnership – a body that will handle many millions – been made public (even though it receives substantial public money from selling the venue hosting rights).
Meanwhile, to make all of these new arrangements possible, the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, as the defending club under the Deed of Gift, surrendered its commercial rights to ETNZ, who then transferred that control of the Cup to America’s Cup Properties. In practical effect, the NZ club handed all power and financial benefits to the syndicates, and to the people who run them.
Not everyone is satisfied with this situation. The Société Nautique de Genève, the parent club of the Alinghi syndicate, wrote directly to the RNZYS with their concerns, asserting that Team New Zealand was now selling something they did not own. In March, Tom F. Ehman Jnr., a former executive director of two US Cup teams, labelled the RNZYS “the worst trustee in the history of the Cup”.
Last week’s letter from the New York Yacht Club to the NY Attorney General raised pertinent questions, but their arguments have no more force than a simple complaint. The club has allowed itself to be sidelined, and there is no American involvement in AC38 next year.
But the 14-page “Verified Complaint” filed in March with the New York Supreme Court by US businessman and Cup veteran, John Sweeney, is a substantial challenge to the rights and powers appropriated by the ACP. It cites the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron as Defendant because they, as its current defenders, legally hold the Cup in trust and must ultimately be answerable for its conduct.
The legalities are complex but the crux of this dispute is a single clause in the Deed of Gift: “It is distinctly understood that the Cup is to be the property of the Club subject to the provisions of this Deed and not the property of the owner or owners of any vessel winning a match.”
The America’s Cup Partnership clearly breaches that provision, even if the Attorney General were to adopt a narrow view that “the Cup” only means the physical trophy, not the sailing event. But whether she decides to accept Sweeney’s complaint and proceed to a formal court hearing is another matter. If so, then the governing NY statute is likely to be the 1899 Donnelly Act, a law against anti-competitive conduct.
A response from the AG is expected in the next few weeks. R69 is standing by.
The Rat
