Combined Imoca / Americas cup (Thomson / Ainslie)

matt1

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Am picking up that Hugo Boss probably won't want to entertain another Vendee. I guess Ratcliffe may be licking his wounds too, but it got me thinking about a combined AC and IMOCA sponsorship from Ineos. Not impossible to image. Some crossover in technologies / event timing etc. I'd imagine an IMOCA campaign, whilst expensive, would be a fraction of an AC so incrementally not much more. Arguably a bigger band for your buck. Fingers crossed.

I'm thinking Radcliffe would be the kind of guy that would double down rather than walk away?
 

matt1

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Very third hand sources I admit, but they took a lesser role this time with Nokia being more prominent. Nokia put out fwd looking statements. Boss were pretty silent...that kind of thing. Call it the general mood music.
 

flaming

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I've long said that the biggest weakness with sponsorship in professional sailing is that it is so cyclical, and the teams come and go. You go out and look for a sponsor for the event you want to do, whether that's the vendee or the AC, or the Ocean race, form your team and do the race. Then at the end the team often dissolves and the sailors all go their own ways and the sponsor moves on.

Far better, at least in the UK, would be to have a team that says "we're going to run boats in the vendee, Ocean race, Class 40 series, Figaro... etc etc." And then looks for sponsors who want lots of exposure but can accept being one of many, rather than just the big one. And then you also have a pool of sailors, a pool of boat captains / maintenance guys etc. And crucially I think, you have continuity of the team across a number of events and cycles. So it's easier to get "fans" in the way that football etc gets fans. And that of course is where the value to the sponsor is..
 

wully1

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I've long said that the biggest weakness with sponsorship in professional sailing is that it is so cyclical, and the teams come and go. You go out and look for a sponsor for the event you want to do, whether that's the vendee or the AC, or the Ocean race, form your team and do the race. Then at the end the team often dissolves and the sailors all go their own ways and the sponsor moves on.

Far better, at least in the UK, would be to have a team that says "we're going to run boats in the vendee, Ocean race, Class 40 series, Figaro... etc etc." And then looks for sponsors who want lots of exposure but can accept being one of many, rather than just the big one. And then you also have a pool of sailors, a pool of boat captains / maintenance guys etc. And crucially I think, you have continuity of the team across a number of events and cycles. So it's easier to get "fans" in the way that football etc gets fans. And that of course is where the value to the sponsor is..

The problem with sailing sponsorship in Britain is that it is very much a minority sport, seen as a rich gits sport. In France it is viewed differently, especially the head banger end of sailing, Vendee, mini transat, jules Verne etc.
In Britain as a (biased generality by me) sport’ is some fat bald yob in a team top getting pissed in a pub while swearing at the telly.. “fakin love sport me”.... horse racing, darts maybe some tennis if Wimbledon is on. If it isn’t football, forget it.

Advertisers in France are in tune with adventure sports as their target audience is. Skiing, sailing, Parapente, Surfing (Aka windsurfing) k*te surfing feature on the boxes of whatever French is for cornflakes. They may not do it but identify with it.
 

michael_w

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All the Vendee boats were named after sponsors. Better value for money than the AC methinks. I'd be happy that my overdraft went to support Banque Populaire.
 
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