GBR Challenge

Excuse the pun - but football is a different ball game altogether!!

Look at the publicity football gets - that is why it gets the money.

The America's Cup is boring unless you are actually taking part. Who wants to watch 2 boats sailing up and down at less than 20mph, sometimes miles apart, sometimes not racing because of too much/little wind etc?

It is exciting for the Ainslies / Percys of this world as they are taking part. 

Are we not talking about what will motivate a billionaire to throw around his cash in tens of millions?

So what motivates them - it has either got to be a love of the sport or publicity.

Look at Mr Branson's high profile stunts and for that matter Steve Fossett's in his balloon. These are high profile, high publicity events - you can hardly say that about the Americas Cup.

If you were very wealthy and interested in sailing would you:

1. Fund an AC campaign where the only position on the boat you could hope for is 17th man or:

2. Be owner-helm of a Z86 at a fraction of the cost. An AC campaign isn't "small change" even to a billionaire.

I know which I'd go for.

You'd be suprised how much a four year olympic campaign works out at! Especially for Yngling and Star sailors. The money supplied by the lottery is still only a fraction of that cost and the Olympic Sailors still need to rely on the Corporate sponsors.

The AC will always be cheque book sailing - anyone spoken to Mr Branson recently?

I'd say the opposite. I support government and lottery funding for "sport for all", in particular to help people who don't come from sailing families to enter the sport. But professionals should stand on their own feet. If Ben Ainslie wants to compete in the AC, good luck to him, but I really don't see why the taxpayer should foot the bill. Unfortunately if the government paid for everyone's dream lifestyle, there would be nobody left working to actually pay for it. I'm not opposed to lottery funding for Olympic campaigns but the cost of those is a minute fraction of the budget of an AC campaign.