Inside Barcelona's wealthy America's Cup bid: New details of deal with Team New Zealand revealed

Ada Colau (Mayor of Barcelona), Pere Aragonés (President of the Government of Catalonia) and Grant Dalton (CEO of Team New Zealand) after the America's Cup hosting announcement. Photo / Photosport

More details have emerged about the deal between Barcelona and Team New Zealand to host the 37th America's Cup – and they show why Auckland fell behind in the race to host the regatta. Paul Lewis reports.

Barcelona is thought to have lined up 25 wealthy citizens, each underwriting the 37th America's Cup regatta to the tune of a million euros, to help secure hosting rights.

It shows how much ground Auckland and New Zealand had to make up to host the regatta and how much the Spanish city wanted the event, plus the advantage of a bigger country when it comes to hosting an event for which Team NZ has always budgeted $200m (for team and event).

Spanish media and yachting sources say the most remarkable factor is Spain's complicated political scene and that the three government bodies backing the bid normally disagree on pretty much everything.

It's understood the money does not involve funds from Spain's central government – instead coming from the Catalan government, the provincial government, the Barcelona City Council and Barcelona Group, a collection of more than 200 leading companies, entrepreneurs, universities and others with a mission to make Barcelona one of the world's top cities.

The 25 backers are thought to be from Barcelona Group; they are acting as underwriters as the deal focuses on Barcelona's belief it can attract major sponsors – probably not misguided when Spain's Camper shoes and beer brand Estrella Damm have sponsored Team NZ in past America's Cups. However, the 25 will pick up any shortfall, it is believed, up to 1 million euro each (about NZ$1.5m).

The Auld Mug in Barcelona, Spain. Photo / Photosport

That probably puts into perspective the efforts by Mark Dunphy's Kiwi Home Defence movement, which talked a lot about available money for an Auckland defence but failed to produce it – apart from KHD's political manoeuvres which saw Team NZ say they wouldn't work with Dunphy anyway.

Politics are a constant part of Spain's social fabric, particularly in Barcelona – the heart of the Catalonia independence movement which dates back to the mid-19th century and which has gathered real pace in the 2000s. The issue is a vexed one, with real fervour in both camps. The anti-independence side insists the majority is against Catalonia splitting from Spain; the Spanish central government refuses to make binding any referendum on the subject.

That is just one issue that complicates relations between the Catalan, provincial and city governments, with the city council headed by far-left mayor Ada Colau. She's been outspoken in the past about the negative effects of tourism – pre-pandemic, Barcelona was struggling to deal with 30 million tourists a year, with Airbnb and other factors combining to make city rents too expensive for many locals.

A far-left mayor seems most unlikely to team up with a yachting competition often derided as "rich boys' toys". However, what turned the mayor's and the council's heads was apparently that they felt the America's Cup fitted with their efforts to encourage higher-end tourism (and thus avoid the thronging crowd of low-yield visitors that have overrun the city previously).

The team's hydrogen-powered chase boats also appealed to the city's sustainability and environmental drive and the Women's America's Cup – another new development under Team NZ – also helped swing the deal, according to sources.

Now it remains to be seen where those pre-America's Cup regattas – to be raced in the AC40 foiling yachts – will be held. There is talk that some of the sites which missed out (Cork, Malaga and Jeddah) could be hosts, with Auckland also a possibility.

However, outgoing Mayor Phil Goff told RNZ that, if the Cup was not hosted here, Team NZ's current base in the Wynyard Quarter would be set back on a market rate: "We're not obviously going to provide rent-free base for a team that's taken the Cup out of New Zealand."