The man in charge of breathing fresh commercial life into the America’s Cup is entirely unconcerned that prior to taking the job he had no particular experience of sailing.
“I never played for Manchester United and that didn’t stop me from helping to produce the UEFA Champions League,” says Richard Worth, the former head of TEAM Marketing and SPORTFIVE who now, in his new role, is responsible for restoring the aura of one of the world’s oldest international sporting competitions and making it fit for 21st-century purpose.
The America’s Cup is an odd beast. It drips with the salt-spray of history and the tales of great men who have performed fantastic feats ever since the New York Yacht Club’s schooner ‘America’ defeated its British counterpart to win the 100 Guinea Cup off the Isle of Wight in 1851.
The victory was seen as a triumph of the New World over the Old Colonial Power and the Americans returned to New York with the trophy, daring the world to win it back.
Now known as the America’s Cup it was well over 100 years before an interloper was able to snatch the Cup from American hands and even today only three other nations have managed to win it.
The America’s Cup is about excellence, both in terms of sailing skill and strategy and in the design and development of the boats. It is a technological test bed and has, from time to time, sparked accusations of industrial espionage as teams have gone to work to learn each other’s secrets.
So if any event lives up to the notion of ‘pure unscripted drama’ it is the America’s Cup. The only problem is that, over the years, it appears that almost as much of that drama has been dished up in committee rooms and court rooms than on the ocean as competitors have argued about every conceivable detail of the competition.
The last major spat, between Ernesto Bertarelli of the Société Nautique de Genève’s Alinghi team and BMW Oracle Racing’s founder Larry Ellison, took the event right to the legal wire as the two argued over who would compete against whom and in what kind of boats.
“This should be settled on the ocean and not in the courtrooms of Manhattan,” said Bertarelli at the time. But it wasn’t the first time the America’s Cup has been characterised by an almighty dispute between two very rich men and it is unlikely it will be the last.
There were those who thought that the event would never recover from the Bertarelli-Ellison clash but when the two sides did eventually meet on the water it was the Americans who won back the Cup, setting up the 34th edition of the contest due to take place in 2013.
So against this background of acrimony and previous uncertainty, what was it that made Worth take the job?
“It would be too easy just to say it was because they asked me,” he says. “In fact it was because it offered me an opportunity to get involved with something, move it on and develop it. The America’s Cup may be historic but it was still not properly developed as a high-level sports property.
“When I took the job the fallout from the court battles was there and was very real. But when I talked to people about how we could develop the property it didn’t take them long to forget about what had happened in the past and begin to focus on what could be achieved when you have a sports property with a 160-year-old heritage and huge commercial potential.”
In essence, Worth’s approach to the America’s Cup is simple without ever being simplistic. He wants to make it more accessible and more understandable. After all, people will only engage with anything when they understand what is going on, what is at stake, why that’s important and what has to be achieved.
Simplistic, but still quite a challenge.
“The America’s Cup is not obviously a natural fit for the rest of the world of sport,” says Worth. “It hasn’t traditionally been accessible to a broader group and it is difficult to understand. That’s not a challenge you get every day.
“The other thing is that it has traditionally been difficult for broadcasters in a number of ways. Not least the fact it has been difficult to guarantee sailing if the weather conditions aren’t right. Too much or not enough wind and there is no racing.”
Dave Hill, the head of Fox Sports, is reputed to have once dismissed sailing as a sport for TV by describing it as “just white triangles on a blue background.” And of course for years that’s pretty much what it was. By its very nature racing took place way out at sea over courses that could only ever be properly understood by the marshals, skippers and crews actually involved.
“We looked at all the issues around the sport including its ‘elitist’ image and the difficulty of engaging with the public and with TV,” Worth adds. “That meant bringing the racing closer to the shore where it could be seen and making it possible for live and TV spectators to understand what is happening.”
And understanding is the critical element here.
“Just think what a tennis match would be like if there were no court markings,” says Worth. “Nobody would be able to tell whether the ball was in or out or what was happening at any given time. The same is true of a 100-metre race. You have to know where the start and finish-lines are and to see where the competitors are in relation to each other or it is just meaningless.”
Technology played a major part in achieving this objective with the charge being led by the US yachtsman Dan Honey, described by Worth as a “technical genius”. Among Honey’s previous projects have been the development of the First-Down Line used on TV coverage of the National Football League.
For the full interview see the latest edition of SportBusiness International published November 1.
