America's Cup Hosting believed to be allocated to San Francisco

by Richard Gladwell on 1 Jan 2011 The Hosting Rights for the 34th America's Cup are believed to have been allocated to San Francisco, however a formal announcement is yet to be made by the negotiating team working on behalf of BMW Oracle Racing and the Golden Gate Yacht Club.

The letter purportedly from GGYC Commodore, Marcus Young has been published on a local website Alamedawaterfront.com. Addressed to Golden Gate Yacht Club members at and published at 2:02 pm today (31 December 2010), it reads:

December 31, 2010

SF Wins Bid for AC 34

It’s official. San Francisco will be the host City for the 34 edition of the America’s Cup. After a very detailed and exhaustive negotiation, our venue team and the City of San Francisco have come to terms with a program that should make this 34th edition of the Cup the most spectacular to date.

Dates for the event are tentatively set for summer of 2013 for the Challenger/Defender series and early fall for the America’s Cup Defense series.

The Board of Directors and our negotiating team would like to thank all of our members for their long standing support and patience as we carefully worked out the details of this host city agreement. As one can imagine, this was not a simple affair and has been called the most complex agreement in the Cups long history.

That said, we, the Golden Gate Yacht Club, have much to do and look forward to in the coming weeks and months in the dial-up to the most anticipated AC event.

Happy New Year,

Marcus Young

Commodore

However Sail-World understands that the report is premature, and that the final negotiations have not been concluded with the home town of the America's Cup Defender.

An announcement of San Francisco being the preferred venue for the 34th America's Cup is expected sometime today, however it may well be that such an announcement will not be finally confirmed until the City of San Francisco's Board of Supervisor's can reconvene to reconsider the terms of the final settlement hammered out between the America's Cup negotiating team and City officials including Mayor Gavin Newsom.

It is believed that a final signoff could have been made had City Officials not been constrained by the one-sided Northern Alternative proposal put forward by City Hall on 1 December 2010, after four months of negotiation between
the Defender and City Hall.

Following that announcement, and the Board of Supervisors vote 11-0 in favour of the Northern Alternative - using a set of derelict piers to the north of the City Centre, BMW Oracle Racing's Chief Operating Officer, Stephen Barclay told Sail-World that the Defender wished to have the opportunity to 'balance the books' for their part, as the City had done with the Northern Alternative.

Sail-World believes that process has not been possible within the constraints set by the Board of Supervisors and a further meeting and vote will be required before San Francisco is confirmed as the Venue.

If those conditions are not upheld by the Supervisors, then Newport RI, the alternative venue will come back into play. The firmer America's Cup venue previously indicated they would not be able to place a formal bid before the 31 December deadline, and would have to delay until sometime in January 2011.

A formal announcement from the America's Cup negotiating team is expected later today.