August 21, 2024 • 10 mins
There are claims from America's Cup and Team New Zealand CEO Grant Dalton that taking the regatta to Barcelona has already paid off.
It comes ahead of racing starting tonight, with the final preliminary regatta leading into the Louis Vuitton Cup starting late next week.
The move to ditch Auckland for Spain was highly controversial, but Dalton told Mike Hosking they had a combined audience of 914 million for the 2021 regattas and already they're closing in on that with preliminaries.
He says a couple of years ago people in the Catalan city might have thought the America's Cup was the Copa America football tournament, but not now.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
America's Cup begins tonight in Spain. We will take on
Lunar Rossa and of course we've got any else. We've
got Orient Express of Lining, American Magic and it's all
on for the next couple of months. Of course, head
of Team New Zealand from Spain, Grant Dott's with us.
Good morning morning, Mike. Scale of one to ten. Ten,
it couldn't be more ready one. It's a disaster. Watch
your score.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I reckon, it's I reckon. It's probably about a nine.
Actually it's it's you know, we've had a dress rehearsal today,
but preliminary practice racing and it all went really well.
The village opens tomorrow. TIV went well today just in practice. No,
I think we're really ready to go.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
And how does it balance up as being the holder,
the host, plus a team and having to work through
all of that.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Well, it's busy.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Now.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
One of the things about winning the America's Cup you
got to you got to host it as well and
run it, so it makes it pretty busy. But one
of the mistakes that a lot of people think is
that it's like any other sports and that they're independent
of each other. They're not and the winner of the
America's Cup. That's one of the reasons it's so hard
to win. Also puts on the event, so the team
(01:10):
has a big say in how that event gets run,
and you know what the rules are.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
And as far as the rest of it's concerned that
the young people, the women, you know. As good as
that is for the sport, that presumably stretches you even further,
doesn't it. That's a lot of racing, a lot of boats,
a lot of people, a lot of teams.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, it does. I think we've got that pretty well managed.
I mean they run within the base, but independently, like
we're out today racing and they were a little bit
further down the coast two or three miles practice racing
with the other teams, and in fact they haven't even
come back in yet. So it certainly stretches. And it's
not just us though, it stretches all the teams because
(01:49):
that's a whole bunch more people. I think in Team
New Zealand we're around about with the youth and woman
probably aout one hundred and fifty and within the event
we'd be closing in on close to three hundred now,
including the one hundred and twenty TV team.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
So as an event and your long term involvement of it,
this is growing, it's better, it's advancing. We're improving at all.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Well, I mean, certainly we're going to give a bias
you to that, and I am particularly, but you know,
I think we are, and I think that that's showing
in one specific number. When we had the event in
Aukland twenty one, we had a combined audience were over
the course of everything of nine hundred and fourteen million,
(02:35):
And before this event even started, like I'm talking two
months ago, we were already up to about seven hundred
and fifty million apples for apples. So from a growth
point of view, being in Europe, time zone, et cetera,
be it that you know, we're not in New Zealand,
and I understand the frustration of that. It's certainly growing it.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
As far as the technology is concerned, what are we
going to see that's remarkably different from last time? I'm
assuming immediately speed, Yeah, but you.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Know that's to the layman to Formula one cars, you know,
going don't look any different from one season to the
next in terms of their overall speed. I think you'll
see tomorrow when the whole graphics package comes to where
a new and I don't want to say about it
now because we're about to announce it twisting in the morning,
a whole new look and a particular new way to
(03:27):
watch and understand the sport, because of course we all
know it's not an easy sport to understand. I mean,
Kiwis understand it better than anybody. And we've come up
with a whole new mechanism that makes it a more
understanding and we've ran it today live live to ourselves
if you like, and it worked perfectly.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Fantastic bit of a riddle. But wait till tomorrow, Okay,
fair enough to as far as the location is concerned,
you're happy with how that's been handled, how the people
have welcomed you, you know, as a base, and you
know all of that sort of thing that's come together.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Well, yeah, you know we I think if you ask
someone on the street two and a half years ago,
what was America's cup, that it was a soccer of
eton Covid America is a soccer of in South America.
At survey two weeks ago by the main paper, Hair
Levan Guardia to the simple question do you know what
the America's Cup is? And are you going to come?
(04:17):
Seventy seven point five percent of Barcelonians, so you know
that's I think we've done a really nice job integrating
ourselves and the event into the city. And it's very open.
It's a very open waterfront, a very large village, huge
beach front and with the predominant wind directions, we're sailing
right in on the beach.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Now that my fascination at the moment. I don't know
how much time you spent thinking about this of any
but if you look at sport globally, right is there
in terms of the media streaming, the amount of money
that's out there for broadcast rights, all that stuff. It
appears to me that sport has never been more popular
and broadcasters are desperate to get a slice of this
particular action. Will that be an estimation of what's happening
in your sport, you think or not?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
No, it wouldn't. Actually, I think that it's growing, but
all sport is, but it's consumed, as you know, a
lot different than it was. And I think that, you know,
the free to air is coming back into its own
in some ways other than you know, as well as
platforms and to grow the sport. We have TV for
us as a significant cost. We spend a net net
(05:22):
just on twenty million euros on TV to bring the
product to air because we're trying to populate it around
the planet, not just hide it behind paywalls. Now, we
could make that a profit center probably, but it'd be
hidden behind a paywall in the sport would would you
not grow because of it? So we see it as
(05:42):
a responsibility to bring it to more and more people
that we can, and so we see that as a cost.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Is it accessible do you think? I mean, I look
at Drive to Survive in Formula one. We're never going
to drive an F one car and we're never going
to sail the sort of boats you do. But does
it become accessible or fascinating to people, whether or not
they can participate?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, I'm fascinated by
Drive to Survive and F one, but I'm even to
Dry one. And we are doing that with sky Dance,
who did Mission Impossible and Free Solo and The Last
Dance and the Here Now they're better in all the teams,
so we're doing our own version of that and with
the rig coming down on a lingy yesterday. You know,
(06:23):
they had a pretty nice story embedded in the team
as well. Now, I don't know, you know, I think
we just we can only do our best to make
it more popularized by showing it to more people. But
it's never going to be the world's most popular sport.
It just it just isn't. And it's more children and
women in that sale, that's great. But America's cups, America's cup,
(06:47):
it's the top of the food chain, it's the pinnacle
of the sport, and it'll always just be that. You know,
not everybody can be in it.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
What's your sense of a wind window in terms of
you know, not only racing, but people's view of it
and going on, God, there's no racing to again because
the wind didn't blow. Is it a good wind window
in that part of the world.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
You know, they were in high summer here and the
wind should be eight to ten pretty much every day.
Today it was twenty with big waves. It's just you know,
and I was just talking abou our weather guy this
morning about the clouds, and you know, you've seen that
tragedy that happened just just nearby with that but you know,
it's a really weird summer here. It might mean we
(07:27):
have an Indian summer, which is quite good for us
with the event in October. I think in the whole
time we've been sailing here, there's probably been two days
when we've either not been able to fail because of
too much or too little. But what we're going to
get on the day within that, you know, band, I
just don't know. It just isn't the normal summer. And
you always hear that it wasn't a normal summer in
(07:49):
Aukland either, But certainly it's sailable at the moment every day.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Okay, talk to me. Taught me through the teams. Who's hot?
Do you think?
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Yeah? I think it's adding to you know, it's words
a cliche to say they're all good and to the
point they are to me, Luna Rossa is becoming the standout.
And I think today, you know, today everybody was an anger.
Right we race Luna Rossa in very upranged conditions. Tomorrow
we race the English. Today. Practice racing tomorrow. It sort
(08:21):
of counts a bit more. But they're putting away anybody
that come against pretty easily. They spence with the English
after we'd sailed against them today quite easily. It'll be
interesting when we sail on tomorrow because we're not really
set up for high winds at the moment. You know,
you've got to put your boat somewhere. And the other
thing we always have to keep reminding ourselves, and this
(08:44):
is a lesson of San Francisco is they don't count
ow points till October. And we have a lot of
stuff in the pipeline coming which will only make us faster,
and it's not on stream at the moment.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Is that the same for the other teams? Is there
any foxing going on or not?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
No, no, no, they're all you know, they're all going
to get better because their techniques will get but they're
wrung out now. You know, there's three weeks from now.
One's going home, so they've got nothing other than techniques
and the way they sail, they've got nothing left in
the tank. Maybe that tank's good enough to beat us,
but we've got a lot coming, and that's just if
(09:22):
you're going to have some advantages of defender. That's one
of them that we're later on. And that's something we
didn't do right in San Francisco. We got right in Auckland.
We got right in Bermuda and hopefully we'll get it
right here.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
And what would they say about you guys.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
I think they would say that we're pretty fast in
the light to moderate. They wouldn't necessarily comment on uprange
at the moment because frankly the day the first time
we've had it. But I think they'd say we're sailing well.
I think my feel is that it's a unit. The
sailing team is going exceptionally well. And I say that
in contrast to Auckland, where I was one of the
(09:59):
critics of our own sailing team. But they are not
like that anymore. They are very well drilled, mature team.
I mean, I'm listening to them all day on the
comms and they're sailing really well.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Good on you, well go well Tonight, Grunt Dotton, we'll
talk again, Grant Dalton, head of Team New Zealand. Of
course that begins tonight. It's eleven or twelve o'clock tonight,
our time in Spain. For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast,
listen live to news talks they'd be from six am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
America's Cup begins tonight in Spain. We will take on
Lunar Rossa and of course we've got any else. We've
got Orient Express of Lining, American Magic and it's all
on for the next couple of months. Of course, head
of Team New Zealand from Spain, Grant Dott's with us.
Good morning morning, Mike. Scale of one to ten. Ten,
it couldn't be more ready one. It's a disaster. Watch
your score.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
I reckon, it's I reckon. It's probably about a nine.
Actually it's it's you know, we've had a dress rehearsal today,
but preliminary practice racing and it all went really well.
The village opens tomorrow. TIV went well today just in practice. No,
I think we're really ready to go.
Speaker 1 (00:38):
And how does it balance up as being the holder,
the host, plus a team and having to work through
all of that.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Well, it's busy.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Now.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
One of the things about winning the America's Cup you
got to you got to host it as well and
run it, so it makes it pretty busy. But one
of the mistakes that a lot of people think is
that it's like any other sports and that they're independent
of each other. They're not and the winner of the
America's Cup. That's one of the reasons it's so hard
to win. Also puts on the event, so the team
(01:10):
has a big say in how that event gets run,
and you know what the rules are.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
And as far as the rest of it's concerned that
the young people, the women, you know. As good as
that is for the sport, that presumably stretches you even further,
doesn't it. That's a lot of racing, a lot of boats,
a lot of people, a lot of teams.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Yeah, it does. I think we've got that pretty well managed.
I mean they run within the base, but independently, like
we're out today racing and they were a little bit
further down the coast two or three miles practice racing
with the other teams, and in fact they haven't even
come back in yet. So it certainly stretches. And it's
not just us though, it stretches all the teams because
(01:49):
that's a whole bunch more people. I think in Team
New Zealand we're around about with the youth and woman
probably aout one hundred and fifty and within the event
we'd be closing in on close to three hundred now,
including the one hundred and twenty TV team.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
So as an event and your long term involvement of it,
this is growing, it's better, it's advancing. We're improving at all.
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Well, I mean, certainly we're going to give a bias
you to that, and I am particularly, but you know,
I think we are, and I think that that's showing
in one specific number. When we had the event in
Aukland twenty one, we had a combined audience were over
the course of everything of nine hundred and fourteen million,
(02:35):
And before this event even started, like I'm talking two
months ago, we were already up to about seven hundred
and fifty million apples for apples. So from a growth
point of view, being in Europe, time zone, et cetera,
be it that you know, we're not in New Zealand,
and I understand the frustration of that. It's certainly growing it.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
As far as the technology is concerned, what are we
going to see that's remarkably different from last time? I'm
assuming immediately speed, Yeah, but you.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Know that's to the layman to Formula one cars, you know,
going don't look any different from one season to the
next in terms of their overall speed. I think you'll
see tomorrow when the whole graphics package comes to where
a new and I don't want to say about it
now because we're about to announce it twisting in the morning,
a whole new look and a particular new way to
(03:27):
watch and understand the sport, because of course we all
know it's not an easy sport to understand. I mean,
Kiwis understand it better than anybody. And we've come up
with a whole new mechanism that makes it a more
understanding and we've ran it today live live to ourselves
if you like, and it worked perfectly.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Fantastic bit of a riddle. But wait till tomorrow, Okay,
fair enough to as far as the location is concerned,
you're happy with how that's been handled, how the people
have welcomed you, you know, as a base, and you
know all of that sort of thing that's come together.
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Well, yeah, you know we I think if you ask
someone on the street two and a half years ago,
what was America's cup, that it was a soccer of
eton Covid America is a soccer of in South America.
At survey two weeks ago by the main paper, Hair
Levan Guardia to the simple question do you know what
the America's Cup is? And are you going to come?
(04:17):
Seventy seven point five percent of Barcelonians, so you know
that's I think we've done a really nice job integrating
ourselves and the event into the city. And it's very open.
It's a very open waterfront, a very large village, huge
beach front and with the predominant wind directions, we're sailing
right in on the beach.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Now that my fascination at the moment. I don't know
how much time you spent thinking about this of any
but if you look at sport globally, right is there
in terms of the media streaming, the amount of money
that's out there for broadcast rights, all that stuff. It
appears to me that sport has never been more popular
and broadcasters are desperate to get a slice of this
particular action. Will that be an estimation of what's happening
in your sport, you think or not?
Speaker 2 (04:58):
No, it wouldn't. Actually, I think that it's growing, but
all sport is, but it's consumed, as you know, a
lot different than it was. And I think that, you know,
the free to air is coming back into its own
in some ways other than you know, as well as
platforms and to grow the sport. We have TV for
us as a significant cost. We spend a net net
(05:22):
just on twenty million euros on TV to bring the
product to air because we're trying to populate it around
the planet, not just hide it behind paywalls. Now, we
could make that a profit center probably, but it'd be
hidden behind a paywall in the sport would would you
not grow because of it? So we see it as
(05:42):
a responsibility to bring it to more and more people
that we can, and so we see that as a cost.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
Is it accessible do you think? I mean, I look
at Drive to Survive in Formula one. We're never going
to drive an F one car and we're never going
to sail the sort of boats you do. But does
it become accessible or fascinating to people, whether or not
they can participate?
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Yeah, I think you're right. I mean, I'm fascinated by
Drive to Survive and F one, but I'm even to
Dry one. And we are doing that with sky Dance,
who did Mission Impossible and Free Solo and The Last
Dance and the Here Now they're better in all the teams,
so we're doing our own version of that and with
the rig coming down on a lingy yesterday. You know,
(06:23):
they had a pretty nice story embedded in the team
as well. Now, I don't know, you know, I think
we just we can only do our best to make
it more popularized by showing it to more people. But
it's never going to be the world's most popular sport.
It just it just isn't. And it's more children and
women in that sale, that's great. But America's cups, America's cup,
(06:47):
it's the top of the food chain, it's the pinnacle
of the sport, and it'll always just be that. You know,
not everybody can be in it.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
What's your sense of a wind window in terms of
you know, not only racing, but people's view of it
and going on, God, there's no racing to again because
the wind didn't blow. Is it a good wind window
in that part of the world.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
You know, they were in high summer here and the
wind should be eight to ten pretty much every day.
Today it was twenty with big waves. It's just you know,
and I was just talking abou our weather guy this
morning about the clouds, and you know, you've seen that
tragedy that happened just just nearby with that but you know,
it's a really weird summer here. It might mean we
(07:27):
have an Indian summer, which is quite good for us
with the event in October. I think in the whole
time we've been sailing here, there's probably been two days
when we've either not been able to fail because of
too much or too little. But what we're going to
get on the day within that, you know, band, I
just don't know. It just isn't the normal summer. And
you always hear that it wasn't a normal summer in
(07:49):
Aukland either, But certainly it's sailable at the moment every day.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
Okay, talk to me. Taught me through the teams. Who's hot?
Do you think?
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Yeah? I think it's adding to you know, it's words
a cliche to say they're all good and to the
point they are to me, Luna Rossa is becoming the standout.
And I think today, you know, today everybody was an anger.
Right we race Luna Rossa in very upranged conditions. Tomorrow
we race the English. Today. Practice racing tomorrow. It sort
(08:21):
of counts a bit more. But they're putting away anybody
that come against pretty easily. They spence with the English
after we'd sailed against them today quite easily. It'll be
interesting when we sail on tomorrow because we're not really
set up for high winds at the moment. You know,
you've got to put your boat somewhere. And the other
thing we always have to keep reminding ourselves, and this
(08:44):
is a lesson of San Francisco is they don't count
ow points till October. And we have a lot of
stuff in the pipeline coming which will only make us faster,
and it's not on stream at the moment.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Is that the same for the other teams? Is there
any foxing going on or not?
Speaker 2 (09:01):
No, no, no, they're all you know, they're all going
to get better because their techniques will get but they're
wrung out now. You know, there's three weeks from now.
One's going home, so they've got nothing other than techniques
and the way they sail, they've got nothing left in
the tank. Maybe that tank's good enough to beat us,
but we've got a lot coming, and that's just if
(09:22):
you're going to have some advantages of defender. That's one
of them that we're later on. And that's something we
didn't do right in San Francisco. We got right in Auckland.
We got right in Bermuda and hopefully we'll get it
right here.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
And what would they say about you guys.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
I think they would say that we're pretty fast in
the light to moderate. They wouldn't necessarily comment on uprange
at the moment because frankly the day the first time
we've had it. But I think they'd say we're sailing well.
I think my feel is that it's a unit. The
sailing team is going exceptionally well. And I say that
in contrast to Auckland, where I was one of the
(09:59):
critics of our own sailing team. But they are not
like that anymore. They are very well drilled, mature team.
I mean, I'm listening to them all day on the
comms and they're sailing really well.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Good on you, well go well Tonight, Grunt Dotton, we'll
talk again, Grant Dalton, head of Team New Zealand. Of
course that begins tonight. It's eleven or twelve o'clock tonight,
our time in Spain. For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast,
listen live to news talks they'd be from six am weekdays,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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