Image credit: Ian Roman / America's Cup

Now it gets interesting for the UK. We have just seen Ben Ainslie and the team INEOS take control of the Louis Vuitton Cup Finals and win the right to formally and physically challenge Emirates Team New Zealand in the America’s Cup Final on the water.

Obviously, the success of Ben and his team owner and financial supporter, Sir Jim Ratcliffe, is only the start of the AC journey, as there is now a series of high-octane races due to conclude between 12 and 27 October off the coast of Barcelona. I hope the wave of interest now grows and all eyes are focused on Team INEOS to see if they can bring the Auld Mug home to Cowes, the historic starting point of the world’s oldest sporting event.

Yes, we have heard grumblings from investors, backers and sponsors about the lack of airtime, limited viewers and other issues related to the lack of global interest in this unique race, but anyone who has spent time on YouTube or the AC website, watching some of the racing, has not been disappointed. It’s a purist’s sport, combining incredible engineering and hydro-dynamics and aero-dynamics with fitness and sailing skills with crew sitting in tiny race cockpits hunting for gusts of wind that propel these cool catamarans to speeds of 45 knots and beyond.

Essentially, these foiling cats are flying like nothing we have ever seen and we need to applaud the tech and the skill. However, the comments that this is an elitist competition between yachting billionaires has not gone unnoticed, but if that is the case, which it is, why is Formula 1 so popular with global audiences? After all, there are so many similarities.

This is an exciting time for sailing, yacht racing, Barcelona and Team INEOS, as they have one more series of races against the holders Emirates Team New Zealand and if, and I say if, they beat the Kiwis, not only will they make history after being one of the founding nations of the trophy, never to have won it, but they choose the host location of the next America’s Cup. It is highly likely that if Team INEOS and Britannia are successful and win the 37th AC 2024, Jim Ratcliffe and Ben Ainslie are very likely to choose to host the 38th America’s Cup in the original location off the Isle of Wight, with race villages in and around Southampton Water.

It will be interesting to see if they change the race formats or expand the horizons of this event, similarly to the way Larry Ellison added his vision to yacht racing after his involvement in the Cup with Team Oracle, a few series back in 2003, with the birth of the Sail GP format.

In essence, the America’s Cup is a hugely expensive programme that is the domain of a few billionaires who can afford to throw 150 million euros into the race, with the risk of exiting the cup within a few weeks, after a few years of design, build, prep and testing. Perhaps there is an opportunity to make sailing even more accessible, exciting and interesting for the next generation. We have seen this in Barcelona with the first Women’s series and Youth series, but it would be good to see some evolution and innovation in the format so it puts yachting on the global map and the media see it as something interesting and exciting.

A recent mini-column in the Weekend FT gave the Team INEOS victory about 150 words of comment and one very uninspired image, without understanding the investment, impact and possibility of what an America’s Cup victory would do for the UK economy, let alone the impact on yacht design and sailing in the UK.

It’s going to be an interesting few weeks ahead and my fingers are crossed for Ben Ainslie and the INEOS team, as the idea of the America’s Cup coming back to UK waters, just off the coast of the Royal Yacht Squadron, is a mouth-watering prospect in so many ways.

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