Victoria Cup

In 2008 the inaugural Victoria Cup was played between the Russian League champion club Mettallurg Magnitogorsk and the New York Rangers in Bern, Switzerland before a sold-out crowd of 16,000 fans. We helped create this new event utilizing some of our core competencies:

• Concept Development & Implementation
• Brand Development
• Sales & Marketing
• Event Management

In partnership with the IIHF & NHL, we developed, commercialised and delivered a class-leading event which was universally praised by the ice hockey community and the media. The Victoria Cup was a great success and has provided the sporting foundations for expanded head to head encounters between the best European and North American ice hockey clubs.

America's Cup

In early 2010, Oracle Corporation Founder Larry Ellison won the 33rd America's Cup in Valencia, Spain. Mr. Ellison decided to stage the 34th Cup in San Francisco and asked Craig Thompson to become the CEO of the America's Cup Event Authority, its commercial/operational arm.

In order to plan the concept for the 34th Cup, Craig and Russell Coutts — four-time America's Cup winner and CEO of Oracle Racing — met to determine the strategy. The brief was to make the Cup more exciting for a younger audience, make it better for a TV audience, and allow race syndicates to realize a return on their investment. The 34th America's Cup concept was born from this background. Craig had a long history of creating new sporting competitions with effective branding, and Russell was the top professional sailor who knew the sailing world as well as anyone. This was the new concept for the 34th America's Cup:

• "The Best Sailors on the Fastest Boats"  This new slogan was created for positioning/marketing.
• Racing in Catamarans  Not the traditional mono-hulls, catamarans are very fast, add an element of danger, are more affordable for the syndicates, and require younger, fitter sailors.
• Race Courses Close to Shore  America's Cup races had always been held "out at sea," available only on TV. AC34 courses are all close to shore where huge crowds can see and be seen in the TV coverage.
• The Youth America's Cup  In order to get young sailors involved, we created this new international racing series on smaller replicas of America's Cup cats.
• The World Series  A new series of races held 6-8 times per year around the world at prestigious venues. This made the America's Cup a regular occurring event for the first time.
• America's Cup TV Production  Where this had always been done previously by broadcasters, we set up a world-class production unit with top directors and technical staff to present the America's Cup better than ever before. "Sailing from the Inside Out," cameras were mounted on all the boats and the sailors mic'd up.
• The Healthy Ocean Legacy Campaign  As sailing is on the oceans and sailors love the sea, a campaign was developed to help "Save the World's Oceans" with leading ocean NGO's.

This new concept and brand are now successfully being implemented for the 34th America's Cup - the oldest organized sport in the world, with a whole new modernized approach.