Michelle Hooper: SailGP Head of Major Events secures Auckland as host for regatta

CEO Sir Russell Coutts has today announced the City of Sails as the second stop of next season's world tour.

Auckland Unlimited revealed their million-dollar investment to the January regatta, which returned $5million.

Head of Major Events Michelle Hooper told Heather du Plessis-Allan that they're looking to do it all again and continue to have Auckland host in the future.

She says the intention by all parties is to have Auckland host in 2027 and beyond - but they just have to sort out long-term funding.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now very very good news if you love seeing things
work properly and also love sale GP. It's coming back
to Auckland next year, slightly later in the year though,
it's going to be in February. Michelle Hooper is the
head of Major Events at Tartuki and Auckland Unlimited and
is with us now. Michelle.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Hello, good at evening, Heather, bring you some great stunny
news on a dreary old winter's day.

Speaker 1 (00:21):
Tell you what it's good in the middle of winter
to be thinking about sitting outside watching sailing in the summer.
Explain something to because I'm a little bit confused. Is
this is this a new deal or is this just
part of the original four year deal and this is
the last year of it.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
What the latter is correct, starts the end of a
four year deal, so you don't. We're delighted to have
secured it for twenty twenty six for Auckland. Obviously the
m behead of kind of overriding agreement with Salgup and
then we lock down the details between ourselves and christ
Church at different times. So this is the final kind
of piece of so the delighted to have secured it.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
The new bit here is that it's not christ Church,
it's us in Auckland.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
Yes, well yeah, yeah, yeah, correct, yeah, and it's yes,
it's well great that it's coming back.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Do you think that we're going to get it in
twenty seven as well?

Speaker 2 (01:06):
Oh we hope to. Yep, we've just got to get
through the obviously have another great year next year and
it'll go from strength to strength. The you know, intention
by all parties is that we do we just have
to sort the long term funding solution out for major events,
but the intention is that we'll get there and you know,
for an event like Seal GP and how it really
takes all of our boxes in terms of it. You

(01:27):
know what New Zealanders love, what Auckin does love. You know,
it's a really it's a great it's a great product.

Speaker 1 (01:32):
Okay, so it comes down to money before we know
about twenty seven, what's the problem.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
There, Well, I mean it's very public in terms of
the going back and forward about the bed levy and
how we'd like to secure that nationally and they has
been very vocal about wanting to secure that and really
we need to unlock our ability to live major events
on a much border scale across the country. You know
the fact that we weren't able to government wouldn't contribute
to supporting the America's Cup. You know, we kind of

(01:59):
get into this perpetual cycle of not being able to
get the things we need. But however, we're very fortunate
to have the likes of sale GP, which is an
amazing product, and you know, we're really lucky with that
we can utilize all of the incredible infrastructure that's been
invested over previous major event hosting for international sailing here
in Auckland. Good. Yeah, and you know, we're really delivering

(02:20):
an event which we have an incredibly educated sailing audience
in New Zealand thanks to the legacy of America's Cups.
And it's great that we can just you know, get
an event like sale GP, stand it up incredibly quickly
and deliver an incredibly professional event in the best way possible.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Michelle, thank you very much, best of luck with that.
That's Michelle Hooper, head of Major Events at Auckland Unlimited.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
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