Off the ball: Hey rich guys! If the America's Cup is such a terrific race ... buy it

Taxpayers' money would be better spent fixing roads and improving TV programmes, says PETER JESSUP.

The America's Cup is self-indulgent self-play by a minority bunch of rich white guys and it beggars belief that the rest of us have to pay for it.

Why did taxpayer-built TVNZ, Lotto and Telecom pour millions into the cup on the spurious grounds that it attracts tourists, attracts boatbuilding orders and attracts interest in our little country at the bottom of the world?

Last campaign, we were subjected to Eskimos paddling canoes with television sets balanced on the bow, Indians walking the highlands with TVs atop their turbans.

Give me a break - if they did have television in either place, the last thing they'd be watching would have been a no-account elitist yacht race from the other side of the world.

Move outside San Diego and even the people of the country that gives the cup its name don't know what it is. The other original racers, England, have just come back into the fold after an absence of many years.

I have nothing against yachting, nothing against the cup. I just don't see why taxpayers should pay for it.

If it's so good at raising money, so brilliant for international exposure, why aren't private companies, multinational corporates into it? Is the cup bill the reason Lion Nathan's Steinlager sells at around $35 a slab while Aussie opposite Carlton United manages to sail its Victoria Bitter over here to sell around $5 cheaper?

Coutts and Co showed how much nationalism, pride of place, loyalty and return of favours meant to them when they jumped ship to join the highest bidders. There were no red faces despite the red socks round-up that got them to the top.

Sports and cup minister Trevor Mallard was quick to stump up another $5.5 million of our money to keep the rest on board.

Soccer and league bosses, more versed in the professional arena, would have advised that money alone won't keep sports stars, and that if cash is the sole motivation you're unlikely to get the best from them even if it does.

Then Mallard refused to send a message of support to David Tua.

Tua's fight with Lennox Lewis cornered more viewers than any cup race, and the boxer did more to help sick, bashed and car-smashed kids than the whole of Team New Zealand put together - and never a dollar in it for him.

The waterfront was redeveloped, backers say.

That would have happened anyway once the rich boys and Ports of Auckland decided there were enough dollars in it.

While seated in interminable traffic jams, Aucklanders have plenty of time to ponder how the city council, regional authority and Government money thrown on the water could have helped to improve roading for all.

If the claimed $640m in "economic activity" said to have been attracted to the city ever really existed, far too much of it went to lawyers and receivers who dealt with the fallout of failed restaurants and bars, charter businesses and apartment builders.

If the Sirs from Lipton to Fay, the clothiers from Prada to Louis Vuitton, the world giants of computer technology want to burn on a yacht race amounts that could save the starving of a sizeable African nation, that's their prerogative.

Why are the rest of us expected to blindly bow down and follow?

Why not sell the cup, lock, stock and start-gun-barrel competition?

The proceeds would buy plenty of children's educational TV and quality drama for the state broadcaster, pay for suitable programmes to help gamblers with Lotto or other addictions, and allow an upgrade of telecommunication services.

Herald Online feature: America's Cup