1)Venue. Not likely to be decided before December 2003. Good reliable sailing breezes an imperative. Jon Bilger and the Alinghi weather are still collecting data from some candidate venues.
2) ACC. Relatively few changes envisaged.
3) Design/Intellectual property. R & D carried out until the Cup just finished can be sold on the open market for a period of approximately 12 months. This will allow the teams who spent vast sums on design technology to recoup some costs whilst giving newcomers a leg-up by buying into the current state of the art.
For this to happen, there has be clear proof of where intellectual property rights reside; with an individual or with his team. This will allow teams to decide how to control intellectual property. Presently it is a complex mixture of some teams' wholly owning all material, or of designers licensing their product to a team, which makes drafting rules on technology transfer difficult in real world situations.
4) Nationality. All the Interpretative Resolutions and Protocol provisions will be revoked. There will be no stipulations on either designers or sailors other than to commit to one team/country 18 months ahead of the Cup. Once in, there can be no changes, as Rod Davis did for example this year, going to help Team New Zealand after Prada's elimination.
In Alinghi's eye, the nationality rules are unworkable. They spent US$3 million on maintaining housing in Geneva and Auckland for their team members. Likewise Oracle wasted US$2.5 million in California and Auckland.
Total freedom on the nationality issue will allow Team New Zealand style syndicates to pay the national identity card without restriction whilst the Alinghis and Oracles can carry on as cosmopolitan conglomerates.
5) Boats. Teams will be permitted two new hulls and up to two modified old hulls. This too could boost low budget start-ups.
6) Rights, TV and sponsorship. A new entity will bridge both the challenger and defender interests, combining the roles currently undertaken by CORM and AC2003. Alinghi will give up some of the rights of the defender by selling the commercial rights, (TV and sponsorship), for both the challenger trials, defence series and Cup match combined.
Only 10% will be deducted by the new body as a fee and proceeds split 50:50 between the defender and challengers. To do with away the suspicion pervading current Cup rights sales, accounts will be audited twice annually and made available to bone-fide challengers.
7) Administration. All of the race committee, International Jury, Arbitration Panel and measurement committee functions will be rolled into one new and independent body. It will operate with its own budget and its express brief is to run the regatta for the wider benefit of the sport, not one team's interests.
A Jury will replace the Arbitration Panel and International Jury, (stand by for blood to be split with ISAF over this since Alinghi have no intention of forking out a fat sanction fee to ISAF and getting nothing in return). The Jury will have investigative powers.
In a welcome move to do away with politically inspired protests or issues such as the OneWorld secrets-for-sale saga which dragged on for over a year without the key charges ever being subjected to any test of proof, the new dispute resolution body will have wide powers.
For instance, protests have to be lodged within seven days. Mischievous applications will not be tolerated. Penalties will be meaningful in that points and sails, (from a team's quota), may be deducted. Personnel can be kicked out of the event too, to encourage individual culpability, (one thinks of avoiding a repeat of the Sean Reeves sage here...)
8) Weather data. In another boost to smaller teams, high grade met data will be available to all teams, so curbing one area of profligate expenditure. Teams can still spend extra on top for micro data, but the base level of macro data for all teams will be much higher.
9) Defence trials. Bertarelli recognises defence trials were the norm in the Cup before Team New Zealand wrote them out for 1995 and 2000 Cups when they had no rivals at home. This resulted in some very lopsided rights, (like double the challengers' sail quote or later boat declaration). Alinghi is likely to welcome other Swiss defence teams provided they are bone-fide and strong. It will not want to waist time in pointless trials against a no-hope minnow or spoiler.
10) Date. Best hunch is early summer 2007. A clash with the 2006 soccer World Cup is unlikely and some venues might need time to build up their infrastructure.
Tim Jeffery, 3 March 2003
