Selection period for 37th America’s Cup host venue extended

The Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron (RNZYS) together with Emirates Team New Zealand (ETNZ) have announced today that they are extending the selection period for the three shortlisted offshore venues bidding to host the 37th America’s Cup. This decision has been made to enable the venues to continue to work through final details and provide further information required for their respective bids.

“For the benefit of both the 37th America’s Cup and the eventual host venue, we would rather allow some more time now so we make the right decision as opposed to a rushed decision,” says RNZYS Commodore Aaron Young.

ETNZ and RNZYS have said that they ‘believe it is both prudent and responsible to extend the deadline in which the offshore venues can continue to progress negotiations after Covid lockdown in New Zealand has made it impossible for ETNZ team members to visit the venues.’

Face to face meetings had originally been planned to provide final team feedback to act on Origin Sports Group’s recommendations.

The search for the AC37 Host Venue was started back in May 2020 by Origin Sports Group but was paused for a three-month period from March 17th, during which the New Zealand Government had the exclusive right to negotiate AC37 being held in New Zealand and continued once this period lapsed.

In addition, according to the NZ Herald, a company owned by former investment banker and oil and gas entrepreneur, Mark Dunphy, has written to the RNZYC and ETNZ ‘offering to assist with the ‘at home’ defence of the America’s Cup.’

Grant Dalton, CEO of ETNZ, comments: “The fundamental fact is that we have a number of outstanding potential venues literally going down to the wire and all of them with strong and competitive bids on the table and firmly committed to completing agreements in the coming weeks – that’s a good place to be in for sure. It’s frustrating not to have been able to close our agreement with a Host Venue by the planned date of 17 September as previously proposed but we are now giving ourselves more time to work through the final details of the respective venues as the current COVID situation in New Zealand has made the process more difficult.

“As we have always maintained throughout, however unlikely it seemed, Auckland has never been off the table for obvious reasons. So now that we finally have an 11th hour letter from Mr Dunphy, it would be remiss of us not to explore the viability of an Auckland event and if it in fact can be fully and completely funded locally. To date there has been no evidence of this being the case.”

However, Dunphy’s bid attempt to keep the America’s Cup in Auckland is hitting a wall of opposition mixing equal amounts of terror, surprise and outrage, reports Stuff, with Sports animation pioneer ​Ian Taylor raising questions about who Dunphy’s funders are, and Warehouse founder and long-time America’s Cup sponsor ​Steve Tindall airing his fears that if “the only way we can get money is through Mr Dunphy, he controls everything”.

The length of the extension to the selection period has not yet been confirmed.