ACM RIB in action Photo:©2006 CupInfo

CI:  We have seen a late entry as a rights-holder of American media, OLN entered quite late compared to other media. What’s the next goal for ACM in terms of television coverage?

MH:  The most recent was UK. I think we have all of the major territories covered now.  The goal now is to deliver a quality product; it’s not to go searching for more territories.  If we can deliver a seriously quality product to all the main players in the world, that’s what counts.  The goal is to deliver a good product.

CI:  The new media partnership with Alcatel, has it brought a lot of technical help to you?

MH:  Alcatel is taking the data and products that the America’s Cup developed in the last three Cup cycles to another audience across a mobile platform.  The America’s Cup innovated with Virtual Eye and virtual footage on the internet and on TV in the mid ‘90s, so the mobile phone thing is obviously the next step. 

CI:  Are there any plans to develop further the virtual coverage on the internet?

MH:  Yes, there will be an interactive internet product in 2006, definitely by 2007.  In 2005 it was just broadband TV that you are watching. 

CI:  There is a large Cup fan community out there seeking additional ways to watch virtual information on the Cup. Are you looking for help to design the new product?

MH:  No, all the new media stuff is in the hands of ARL and Alcatel ... they have plans themselves. They bought those rights to exploit that data, they are the experts in the domain, so that’s what we will leave them to do.

What’s important to realize, is like a Soccer World Cup or the Olympic games, the America’s Cup earns a certain number of rights, be they television, media, new media, trademark rights, licensing rights, all the rest of it.  To pay for this sort of thing, it costs a lot of money to do this, there has to be a careful balance between selling of rights, but, not over-selling and under delivering.

It’s about protections as well.  If you imagine ... this is the 32nd America’s Cup right now, but this is just one Act.  Whereas sometimes you say the 32nd America’s Cup is a four year thing, we have competition all the way. But at the same time, we say "let’s not burn everything before 2007."  When you come back next year I want you to say "Wow, that’s so much better than 2005" [rather than] you come back in 2007 and say "It's not."

Every year it’s a step forward and so I would answer you by saying - yes there are plans for a lot of things and also people’s understanding of the project develops, and technology develops and we step forward all the time as well.  It’s not just in new media, it’s in boat design, it’s in ideas and techniques.  I mean, we have been working on this since Marseille last year and we do things differently every time and we learn from our previous mistakes, and we have more equipment and better ideas and different people.

So, it’s constant evolution even across one cycle that’s making things better.  In previous Cups when you started from day one with the Louis Vuitton Cup with no build up at all from a technical point of view and a operational point of view, you started with the maximum number of teams at the beginning of Louis Vuitton Cup with a bunch of untrained staff who had no experience of it, and the maximum number of media and guests coming to see all the teams there.
 

	The Prize! Photo:©2006 CupInfo

As the Louis Vuitton Cup progressed, teams would start to be eliminated, so the numbers would go down, and you get down to just one race course to run the semi finals and finals.  The staff would become more and more experienced, all of the systems work, and by the time you got to the end, it was completely the other way around.  You’d have two teams left in the competition and we could do it in our sleep. Everything runs beautifully and all of the guests from the people who had been eliminated are gone.

So, instead we decided to run it this way, where nobody is eliminated until the 6th of May, 2007, and we have all built up a progression and understanding all the way along, and everybody gets to do a little bit of everything.  But we haven’t compromised on what is the Louis Vuitton Cup and what is the America’s Cup.

CI:  Thanks Marcus!

--©2006 CupInfo

Special thanks to Diane Swintal for her contribution to this article.