Wanted: Title Sponsor for British America’s Cup team

Among the five challenging teams for the 35th America’s Cup, Ben Ainslie Racing (BAR) sailing is now looking for a new title sponsor after Ainslie’s long time financial partner, financial services company JP Morgan, decided not to continue past 2014.

It is understood that New York-based JP Morgan, which has been the title sponsor of Ainslie personally since 2007, through his 2008 and 2012 Olympic campaigns, and the main global partner of BAR since the team’s launch in January 2012, feels an alignment with a British team against American competitors would not match its brand image.

Known as J.P. Morgan BAR, the team competed in the 2012/13 America’s Cup World Series, as well as the 2014 Extreme Sailing Series.

BAR has set a budget which relies on sponsorship revenue to cover 60 percent, with the remaining 40 percent by private investors. There is currently a four-tier structure in place for BAR’s sponsorship offering: one title partner, two second-tier main partners and a yet-to-be-defined number of official suppliers and technical suppliers in the third and fourth tiers. The number of suppliers will be defined by team needs when readying the boat for competition.

Full report on Sports Business.