We’ve updated our ‘Top 30 Sailing Brands on Facebook‘ chart. This month’s movers include the Extreme Sailing Series and the Audi Med Cup as their 2011 calendar of events get going. The Vendee Globe is a ‘new entry’ and the Volvo Ocean Race maintains its position on the top of the chart.

The fastest growing property in the top 30 during May was the Extreme Sailing Series (11.39%). This may be due in part to spectacular capsizes in Qingdao, China which have been shared virally around the social web.

Having actual events, is an advantage to growing fans in the real-world and on  Facebook. 200 of the 6523 likes that the Extreme Sailing Series has are from Turkey, however only 20 are from China.*

Just outside the top 30, the World Match Racing Tour, who held their first event during May, grew by 9.4%, but only 180 of their likes are in France, which seems low considering the strong representation of French sailors in the tour this year. The Audi Med Cup, who also ran their first event for 2011 during May achieved the highest growth of all the properties we monitor, growing at 40% to 2473 likes.

The required ‘likes’ to make it into the top 30 is now 2839.

Social media is playing an increasingly important role in activating sponsorships and creating long term fans. It’s not just the American and ‘developed’ markets that are growing. Emerging markets are hungry to embrace these new technologies and innovations like location based social media tool FourSquare are being used in places like Turkey more than in France or the UK.

At the Extreme Sailing Series event held in Istanbul recently, more people were ‘checked-in’ to the Extreme Sailing Series than check into my local Starbucks, which is not a scientific test, but an interesting trend to keep an eye on. The Extreme Sailing Series will visit Boston next, where Foursquare users should be plentiful.

You can see the complete ‘Top 30 Facebook Sailing Brands list’ here…

*The numbers of likes from a particular country has been determined using Facebook’s Social advertising platform.

Even if you wanted to compare sailing sponsorship opportunities side-by-side, it is a very difficult thing to do. We’re often asked where money should be invested into the sport, and invariably the answer is another question – what are you trying to achieve? In fact – those who are looking to sponsor sailing should be asked all kinds of questions about their goals, their audience, their geographical market presence amongst other things.

It’s the same with motor-sport or football. There is not a lot of point sponsoring the English Premier League if you are targeting the Italian market. You might get a lot more value out of  DTM (German Touring Cars) than F1 if you are targeting your message to a specific group of customers.

The Audi Med Cup 0ffers companies a proven, targeted, platform with high performance competition as well as the backing of a title sponsor. It’s always interesting to listen to company executives explain their reasons for a particular sponsorship investment – and André-Jacques Auberton-Hervé, Chairman and CEO of Soitec, the new partner of the Audi Sailing Team powered by ALL4ONE says:

“We join the Audi Sailing Team powered by ALL4ONE with the goal to reinforce the Franco-Germanic team – a leader meeting another leader to win together! We have chosen to enter the sailing world because our targets are leadership, performance and efficiency – which are key words in our field of expertise. To be successful at the Audi MedCup and other regattas, the ALL4ONE team must generate a winning performance against international competitors out of nothing more than the power of the wind and waves.

In order to be the fastest team on the water the team will develop and optimise its boat using high technologies and techniques. We are established in all the countries of the Mediterranean basin, where our yacht will race, and where we can also demonstrate the strengths of our Concentrix Concentrating Photovoltaic (CPV) solar technology. This technology, aimed at the manufacture of solar farms in sunny regions, is fully in phase with the sustainable development targets that were defined at the 2009 UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, where targets were set for 20% of the world’s energy to be produced from renewable resources by 2020.”

In other words – there is a good fit with the sponsorship opportunity, the markets, the products and the sporting team’s brand and positioning. It remains to be seen how many of the new America’s Cup teams can convince brands that they offer such good value.

Of course, having solid financial backing helps race teams perform better. Stéphane Kandler, ALL4ONE’s CEO commented:

“We are delighted to welcome a new partner onboard, one that is also a world leader in its sector, one that like ALL4ONE has chosen innovation as a growth tool. Our team now has all that is necessary to compete at the highest level on the Audi MedCup Circuit and potentially other international regattas. With a 3-year commitment from both our partners we are now in a position to be able to consolidate our human and technical assets on which we have invested so much since our team’s launch in 2009. We are proud of what we have achieved over this time and excited about what is ahead.”

More Audi Med Cup 2011 News

There was a brief question mark against the 2011 Audi Med Cup when the new organisers of the America’s Cup announced a departure from monohulls to catamarans. The circuit for TP52 yachts had been used by teams like TEAMORIGIN and Emirates Team New Zealand to keep crews together and at the top of their game. But the Audi Med Cup is not the America’s Cup and doesn’t pretend to be. Instead, the series is concentrated on a specific audience in specific markets and delivers great results for title sponsor Audi.

The 2011 season is the seventh successive year of the Audi Med Cup.

Cascais will host the first event – the Trophy of Portugal from May 16th – 22nd. It is part of a busy calendar for the region, with the city also securing the first ever America’s Cup World Series event in September.

The Audi Med Cup then returns to Marseille for the fourth year in a row (June 14-19th), to the historic capital city of Sardinia Cagliari (July 19th to 24th) to Murcia where the ever-popular Cartagena hosts the Region of Murcia Trophy (August 23rd to 28th) while the Catalan capital of Barcelona, which proved such an all-encompassing venue when the Audi MedCup Circuit visited for the first time in 2010, will host the finale between September 12th and 17th.

Ignacio Triay, Director of the Audi MedCup Circuit says consistency is important for the longevity of the events:

“Returning to venues that are known to us is an advantage for everyone in terms of continuity. And the cities keep building and improving on their past years’ formula. And for the organisaton and the race crews that streamlines and improves the logistics. We have also accumulated good data on weather reliability, which makes providing high quality race management and equable racing more straightforward.”

The Audi Med Cup 2011 Calendar, Event Dates and Venues

• Cascais, Portugal – Trophy of Portugal, May 16th to 22nd
• Marseille, France –  June 14 to19th
• Sardinia, July 19th to 24th
• Cartagena, August 23rd to 28th
• Barcelona, Spain – September 12th and 17th

New TP52 Yachts for 2011

The Audi Med Cup has been hampered a little by a perception amongst some that ‘rich owners’ of the TP52 fleet would get bored with the class and move onto something else, but the boat has proved to be a great platform for racing, with competition in 2010, extremely close. In fact, new boats have been built for the 2011 season. New boats include Quantum Racing (USA) and Synergy (RUS) who will campaign very similar, brand-new Botín Partners designs which have been built by Longitud Zero. Rolf Vrolijk has new TP52’s for Audi Sailing Team powered by All4ONE (FRA/GER), Audi Azzurra (ITA), RÀN (SWE/GBR) and Container (GER). Vrolijk also designed Bribón (ESP), which was formerly Matador (ARG) and Gladiator (GBR) which was previously Artemis (SWE).

More Audi Med Cup News

The Audi Med Cup has released its annual review of media value for the series. Sports+Markt has looked at the markets most important to Grupo Santa Mónica Sports and title sponsor Audi, namely the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy, Germany and Portugal and determined that the media value of the Audi Med Cup in 2010 rose by 65%.

Using the figures produced for the 2009 season, a 65% increase would give the series a headline media value of around €41.1 million (that’s around €8.2 per event).  Helpfully, the communications folk at the Audi Med Cup provided the figures from 2009 in the release, so we didn’t have to go back and check them.

The Advertisement Value Equivalent (AVE) from TV exposure increased by three million euros, to a total of 19,3 million euros, compared with the 16,2 million mark reached in 2009. Media content regarding the Audi MedCup Circuit has also increased across the different platforms. The 2009 campaign registered a total of 1.201 published articles, and 2010 reached a higher number: 1.437, with an equivalent value of 7,3 million euros. So the value per article went down, but the number of articles went up.

Fernando Íñigo, Marketing and Communication Director of Grupo Santa Mónica Sports, said:

“Our goal last year was to increase our media impact by 10% globally and by 30% in some specific markets. Having grown by 65% on the previous year´s campaign is the result of our drive to be in the vanguard of technology, especially when talking about the audio-visual field, where we have aimed to bring new communication tools to the wider public”.

Ignaci Triay, Audi MedCup Circuit Director said:

“Last year, we had a great impact in Argentina and New Zealand, in no small way due to teams such Matador and Emirates Team New Zealand being successful on the Circuit”, notes  “ and the fact that we had well-known stars of the sailing world such as Dean Barker or Ray Davies, great skippers and sailors, who come from these countries”.

It’s fantastic that commercial operators at the top of the sport release these figures, but if such large increases are going to be reported, then they should be substantiated a little better. The press release from the Audi Med Cup only outlines the numbers from Articles and TV, which add up to a value in 2010 of just 26.6 million, when the headline figure is 41.1 million. The 2009 figure of 24.9 million did not include an estimated 3.3 million of digital value and there would be an increased value from digital in 2010, but the gap between the headline figure and the numbers in the release is a large 14.5 million.

However the numbers are calculated, the Audi Med Cup is still  one of the best places to get a return on investment in sailing, especially if you are looking to target audiences in the markets where the series visits. The online TV platform will continue to add value to a wider audience.

From a hospitality point of view, the Audi Med Cup has copied the Extreme Sailing Series‘ 5th Man initiative,  calling it Crew+ and allowing one person to be on board in each and one of the boats during the regatta, experiencing the race in person, something that sailing offers over and above almost all other sports.

Perhaps some of the missing 14.5 million euros comes from the value of the on-shore programme of activities which make the public´s involvement with the events so successful. In 2010 this included the Public Village, a free entrance zone with a wide range of activities designed to make the event even more exciting and engaging for the local visitor, registering a total attendance of over half a million people. Interactive games and infotainment -information – entertainment-, sailing-related games, a huge TV screen or live music shows were some of the attractiont that its visitors enjoyed in 2010.

More Audi Med Cup Business News

Sailing would have a much easier time raising sponsorship if it got its collective calendar sorted out. If companies could plan their budgets knowing when and where races were going to be with a bit of notice, it would all be a lot simpler for everyone. Of course this is the kind of thing that a world governing body like ISAF should control. The sheriff should be able to tell the duelling cowboys which dates they could have so that the sport as a whole could make the most of the calendar.

That’s not going to happen anytime soon, but well done to the Audi Med Cup for getting their dates at least out in the public domain. The series, which seems to have survived the loss of some of the more well known America’s Cup teams will run 5 events throughout 2011. Markets visited include France, Italy, Portugal and Spain.

The 2011 Audi MedCup Circuit season will feature both the TP52 Series fleet and the exciting new S40 one-design class which has been attracting worldwide attention since it was announced as the Circuit’s second class from 2011 onwards.

The 2011 dates will be:

• Trophy 1 – Tuesday 17th – Sunday 22nd May
• Trophy 2 – Tuesday 14th – Sunday 19th June
• Trophy 3 – Tuesday 19th – Sunday 24th July
• Trophy 4 – Tuesday 23nd – Sunday 28th August
• Trophy 5 – Monday 12th – Saturday 17th September

The events will a nice short format with the TP52s starting racing Tuesday and finishing on Sunday. There will be a coastal race at each regatta, usually on the Friday. The S40 programme has to be confirmed but will maximise their racing time and they will not race coastal races.

Venue announcements for the 2011 Audi Med Cup will be made shortly. Ignacio Triay (ESP), Audi MedCup Circuit Director, explains:

“We are finalising negotiations with venues at the moment. The principles remain the same and we expect to be returning to a number of the venues that proved so successful in 2010. We are very conscious of delivering what the owners like and also what the preferences are for our sponsor Audi.”

“On the one hand, returning to successful, known venues makes a lot of sense for everyone involved, it allows continuity for everyone: it allows the cities to build on their successful formula, it streamlines logistics for organisers, teams and hosts. And we have built good data on weather reliability and wind patterns for efficient race management on the water. But on the other hand, we all like to visit new cities for different reasons, not least to introduce new challenges for the competitors, which they enjoy.”

More Audi Med Cup News …

In September, Russell Coutts stated that there were no identifiable routes to the America’s Cup for younger sailors. Not only did the statement overlook events like the World Match Racing Tour, it also ignored programs like the British Keelboat Academy (BKA), which was set up to bridge the gap between club racing and being part of a professional team, either in the America’s Cup or offshore events like the Volvo Ocean Race.

While the America’s Cup may not be using keelboats for the 34th edition, top teams like Rán Racing, who will compete in the 2011 Audi Med Cup in a new TP52, have identified the value in having a depth of sailing talent to recruit from.

Niklas Zennström’s yacht racing team have backed up their belief in the British Keelboat Academy, allowing the programme the use of their Farr 45, Kólga. The BKA squad will have the opportunity to put together a Farr 45 campaign as well as learn from having Rán Racing team members on board for coaching. Rán Racing cover the running costs of the boat including yard fees, insurance costs and on-going maintenance.

RYA Racing Manager and BKA Director, John Derbyshire said:

“This is a really exciting opportunity for the Academy and it’s sailors. Not only does it give them the chance to compete in one of the most competitive big boat racing classes in the UK, it also allows them to learn from and develop relationships with what we hope will be really useful contacts for them in taking their sailing forward.”

Fellow Director and UKSA Operations Manager Ben Willows added:

“We are extremely grateful to Niklas Zennström and Rán Racing for their investment and support of the Academy. Making Kólga available to us adds a significant value to what we can offer our sailors and we’re really excited about working with such a high calibre team and making the most of the opportunities it will no doubt create for the sailors.”

Niklas Zennström owner of Rán Racing commented:

“We are really looking forward to working with keelboat racing’s fledgling stars and helping to make provision for their further development. Not many opportunities exist bridging the gap between club racing and professional campaigning so this really is an exciting program. We are already having some of the BKA sailors join the Rán team on our Farr 45, and I see this as an excellent opportunity not only to help the next generation of big boat sailors but also to build the Rán team.”

BKA’s partners include B&G, Wild Graphics, Hamble Yacht Services, Harken, Henri Lloyd, North Sails, Ocean Safety, Premium Liferafts, TT Rigging and RORC.

More reports about the British Keelboat Academy

With the announcement of a new deal for the America’s Cup, sailing talent is shuffling to fill gaps as campaigns put together teams. With the announcement that Terry Hutchinson will leave Quantum Racing’s TP52 campaign to learn how to race catamarans with Artemis,  America’s Cup winner Ed Baird, who has also won the Extreme Sailing Series on Extreme 40 catamarans has been confirmed to helm next season.

Ed Reynolds, President of Quantum Sail Design Group and Managing Director for Quantum Racing (USA) says:

‘Ed is an 11-time world champion, has sailed with many of the guys on our team and is very much committed to our program, which is as much about product development as it is winning races. His accomplishments both on and off the water are impressive and his analytical approach to sailing is a real asset. We’re very excited to bring him on board and will value his expertise as we work to put a new boat, rig and sails on the water.’

Reynolds added:

‘We wish Terry all the best as he prepares for the America’s Cup. He’s done an excellent job for us and we’re grateful for his sailing leadership and contributions to our test team program. This is not unexpected, as we’ve been aware of Terry’s aspirations to one day join an AC campaign. We’ve had a great run with Terry at the helm and fully expect his participation in the America’s Cup to be just as successful.’

Baird has a great sailing CV. He was the winning helmsman of America’s Cup 32 aboard Alinghi, the 2007 ISAF Rolex World Sailor of the Year, and was part of the 1995 America’s Cup winning team, Team New Zealand. Baird has raced in the Whitbread Round-the-World Race, is a three-time Match Racing World Champion and the only American ever to reach #1 on the ISAF World Match Racing rankings. Baird also has extensive Grand Prix and Olympic racing experience and numerous World, International and North American one-design championships to his credit.

More Audi Med Cup News….

There was a time when the Audi Med Cup circuit might have been seen as temporary; the kind of event that existed as a whim for owners who one day would get bored of the TP52 and want to race something else. Some saw the announcement of an America’s Cup in catamarans as the death-blow for the series, but since then, several teams have announced new boats for the 2011 season.

Russia’s Synergy Sailing Team are the latest to announce that they will build a new TP52 for the 2011 Audi MedCup Circuit. The campaign is part of a project to improve the top level of Russian grand prix sailing and introduce more young Russian talent to the upper levels of professional sailing.

The new build TP52 will be built from the same mould as the new Botin Carkeek designed Quantum Racing (USA). The boat will be backed by the same group of five enthusiastic owners and co-sponsors with the team also looking for new co-sponsors to come on board.

Synergy Sailing Team’s project manager Maxim Logutenko says:

“We are in a really good working relationship with Quantum Racing and will build a sistership from the same mould, but there will be some differences in the deck layout and we have been developing some interesting electronics systems this year. We have developed a lot of different tools to use, software and hardware”  “We will work together for next year. At the moment we are in the design process with Botin Carkeek for the deck. But the boats will both look very similar, the hull shape will be the same.”

“We find that for our team the America’s Cup and MedCup are two completely different stories and we can work in parallel with this project. The Audi MedCup Circuit will allow us to bring more and more Russian people on board, training them to be ready for the America’s Cup. That is why we have had a young Russian helm here. The interest in Russia has gone up and up, and the Russian sailing community is happy to see us pushing and pushing. The long term process is to have fully Russian teams and you cannot do that in ten days, in one year. This is a long term project.”

Decisions as to the exact composition of the crew for next season have not been taken. This season their boat was steered by Karol Jablonski (POL) with Rod Dawson (NZL) on tactics, Chris Main (NZL) trimming mainsheet and Francesco Mongelli (ITA) navigating.

“The helmsman for sure will be Russian. We are very excited about the project. It is a good opportunity to bring Russian sailing to the world sailing community. We have five co-owners and some co-sponsors and we are looking for more sponsorship for next year. It is the same group which is pushing, pushing all the time.”

More Audi Med Cup News...

Can professional teams race side by side with ‘Owner / Drivers’ in the same race and benefit both audiences? For sports that are more mainstream, owners are quite content to let their stars do the work, but in some sports like sailing and parts of motorsport (sports car racing), there is a well established tradition of owners competing at the highest level.

For a series like the Audi Med Cup, sports car racing is a great model for organising a championship. This is good news, because Audi are rather good at it. Audi has won the 24 hours of Le Mans 8 times out of the last 10 (9 if you count the Audi disguised as a Bentley). The format of Le Mans, and supporting races that use the same rules, puts 4 classes of car on the track at the same time. Million dollar budget teams race side by side with ‘privateers’, making the spectacle more exciting for fans.

In some cases, the line between pro-team and extremely well funded private team is very fine – and this doesn’t seem to matter. Sailing should be able to manage a similar set of conditions.

The entry of  Niklas Zennstrom’s Rán team into the 2011 Audi Med Cup is good news for the monohull series. After announcing that Audi would continue to support the European tour for TP52 boats, the commitment of an owner like Zennstom gives confidence to teams and sponsors considering their plans for a future made slightly uncertain by America’s Cup manoeuvring.

Niklas and Catherine Zennstrom’s (SWE) Rán (GBR) sailing team, winners of the 2009 Rolex Fastnet Race and current MiniMaxi class world champions and class winners in the last Rolex Sydney-Hobart Race, have decided to make the ‘next logical step’ for them, to race next year’s Audi MedCup Circuit with a boat which starts building imminently at Green Marine in Lymington, England.

Their successful project is run by Tim Powell, who skippers Rán, and has many years experience of the MedCup Circuit as longtime co-helmsman/strategist on Cristabella (GBR).

Zennstrom, co-founder of Skype, will steer the boat. He has been a passionate owner-driver since returning to sailing as a boat owner in 2007, and in 2008 campaigned Rán, an IRC optimised TP52 (the former Patches) in a hot IRC TP52 fleet of six boats in UK and Irish waters.

The boat build will be project managed in England by Chris Hosking, whose TP52 track record includes three Artemis TP52’s, including the 2007 MedCup champion, and the 2006 Vrolijk designed TP52 Illbruck.

Niklas Zennstrom (SWE) owner-driver Rán (GBR):

“I think it is a natural progression for us, we have been watching the Circuit and it seems to be very competitive and very well managed, and seems to be the best thing to do if you want to get more high level racing in. It is a big challenge.”

“It is primarily my wish to get into this fleet, we have discussed it and initially we thought about getting into the fleet in 2012, but we decided that 2011 is more attractive with the Cup teams disappearing. Watching from outside this year, the media coverage it enjoys shows how competitive it is. Full on Cup teams make it difficult to do well, so with some disappearing it can be easier for a team like us to be more competitive.”

“The thing that maybe characterises us as a team is that alongside myself and my wife we don’t have so many so called ‘superstars’, we work very well as a team, and together we just hate losing.”

“It is about winning. Winning as a team is a great thing. It is the whole thing about it that I love, from the planning. I am excited about building a new boat now. We have been good with the MiniMaxi 72 footer, building a very competitive, well built boat, setting up the programme. But in IRC there is so much flexibility. In the TP52 there are very small changes, so that is a very different thing.”

“I am very confident with our team. I don’t have any illusions. I am going into this realising that it will be a learning experience. We are up against full pro teams. We will do our best, but it is going to be hard to do very well.”

Nacho Postigo (ESP), technical director Audi MedCup Circuit:

“ We are very pleased with Rán joining the Audi MedCup Circuit. The team is relatively new but they have done so well and sailed at such a high level, it will be a very interesting new team to join the Circuit. The other two exciting and encouraging things for me are that Niklas is planning to steer his own boat, and this is the first time that we have seen an owner attracted to the Audi MedCup Circuit having had experience of owning and campaigning an IRC moded TP52, and we hope this will encourage more to do the same. I think he will find this challenging at the beginning, but he looks like the kind of person who enjoys a challenge.”

The entry of Rán into the Audi Med Cup silences rumours that Zennstrom will back an America’s Cup campaign any time soon.

More Audi Med Cup News…

Following news that the GP42 class will no longer support the Audi MedCup in 2011 comes the announcement that the Soto 40 (S40) one design will become a key part of the Circuit.

Organisers expect at least eight of the one design grand prix racers to compete next season. They say they have confirmations from three South American teams, two Spanish teams and one French team.

While sailing suffers from a glut of classes, fragmenting the sport into small groups rather than working together, the Soto 40 has experienced good growth since it was purpose designed by Javier Soto Acebal to meet the demand for an exciting, fast and technically advanced 40 footer.

The Soto 40 is a grand prix boat which can be built and campaigned to a tightly controlled, reasonable budget. Success can be achieved on the strength of sailing talent and skills, not simply by the crew with the biggest budget. By the start of the 2011 season at 20 boats will already have been built.

At the top end of the sport, best practise is being shared between series and the Audi Med Cup seem to be taking note of the simplified product offered by the Extreme Sailing Series where the One Design Extreme 40 provides easily understood, exciting, accessible grand prix racing where the first boat across the finish line wins.

Javier Soto Acebal (ARG), designer S40:

“This is a very exciting advance for the Soto 40 taking our design on to the world stage. I am totally happy about this and very proud of the team that have worked together to get us here. My biggest desire is to see the very even, open level of competition which we are seeing now in South America spread to the Audi MedCup Circuit. Each sailor that is racing a Soto 40 when he comes back to the dock has become a better sailor.”

Norberto Alvarez Vitale, owner Soto 40 #2 ‘Patagonia’ and class manager:

“ The initial idea was to forget about rating systems, forget about IMS, design us a boat which is fun. We want to have fun in light winds, we want to have fun in strong winds we want to surf.”.

“The other thing that we had very clear is to bring costs down. For that it had to be one design. In order to be competitive from the very beginning with the boat it has to be a one design. There has to be no development to the boat.”

“In our case that has turned out we raced in Rio two weeks ago and we had a great Chilean boat which won even after he had only got the boat one month ago. All these factors make it fun, make owners want to come to our class and really enjoy racing which is what it is all about. For us it is about the owners and the crew. For us it has been more than what we imagined. We started out with two boats, match racing, and now we have 20 in a year by this December. If that happened in South America where the economy is the way it is I can’t imagine what will happen in Europe once the boat lands in these waters.”

Nacho Postigo technical director Audi MedCup:

“It is a big change to a philosophy for the Audi MedCup. It was a big step forward two years ago to a box rule for the smaller boat class and now we are moving to a one design class. One of the most important reasons is cost, cost of buying the boat, running the boat and resale value. When you exclude development from the equation apart it is also important that when you resell the boat it is still competitive and it has not become outdated. So the value remains.”

“For a newcomer he will have the same tool, the same weapon as all the other boats around. In fact it is more about the sailing skills of the team, not about choosing a designer and how you run the project.”

More Audi MedCup News...