Yachting: America's Cup syndicates looking to cut costs

Meetings between Sir Russell Coutts and potential America's Cup challengers have highlighted the need for budget restrictions ahead of the 34th America's Cup - but don't expect to see a push for one-boat campaigning.

BMW Oracle Racing chief executive Coutts said only a stagnant world economy would prevent the regatta returning to its former glory as a significant multi-challenger event and teams were looking at fundamental ways of reducing costs.

Coutts was in Auckland for the Louis Vuitton Trophy and was talking to teams about the format of the next America's Cup, likely to be held off the coast of San Francisco.

Asked whether the litigious nature of the 33rd edition and the uncertainty surrounding the future of the event would be off-putting to teams, Coutts said: "We've got a good opportunity, in the first instance, to get it back to being a multi-challenger event. Obviously the legal battles in the past were not what most people wanted. That's been and gone now and the important thing is to get this thing back on track and hopefully improve it beyond where it's been in the past.

"The one thing that will be difficult is the economy. The world economy is still at a tough point. For some of these teams to raise money, it will be a challenge.

"We have to think about that. It's one of the things we're talking to the teams about."

Grant Dalton, Emirates Team New Zealand boss, agreed that generating cash would be a lot tougher this campaign. He agreed in principle to the idea of budget reductions.

"There's a genuine knowledge within the sport, certainly within America's Cup, that we have to get budgets under control," Dalton said.

The obvious way of doing that would be to scrap two-boat testing, something that has been mooted in the past, but Dalton believed that would pose more problems than solutions.

"I think two boats is fine," Dalton said. "I'd need to fully consider what it meant because there are ways of one-boat testing but you need access to certain technology.

"At the moment we believe the defender needs to have the ability to race itself so it doesn't end up in the Challenger series, which was always one of the gripes with Alinghi, so on that same basis the challengers should also have two boats."

Dalton said the America's Cup should look closely at league and V8 Supercars, where budget restrictions did work and were successfully policed.

One of the biggest obstacles to cost-cutting has been the ability of some of the world's richest men, Oracle owner Larry Ellison among them, to horde the world's best sailing talent.

Coutts has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of that, but he said there was no reason why Team New Zealand, with significantly less financial resources than Oracle, could not win the cup in 2013, or whenever the 34th regatta is staged.

"I see no reason why not. Team New Zealand is a strong team, one of the strongest. Nothing's really changed there.

"In 2003 Alinghi had the fourth biggest budget in the competition. In 2000 Team New Zealand won with the fifth-biggest budget. In 1995, Team New Zealand was about fifth as well. It's not all about money.

"Money is always nice to have in these campaigns but I think if you have got adequate financial support and you're careful with your money, planning and use your time wisely, that's what's really important."

On this point, Dalton and Coutts are in accord.

"That's true, but you have to have enough as well," Dalton said. "It's a very fine line. If you have lots of money and a very good organisation you've got a pretty good chance.

"Money doesn't buy everything, but if you can put the structure around it you have a hell of an advantage."