The way Sir Keith Mills explains it in this month’s cover story , the America’s Cup, the world’s most famous yacht race, is the ultimate entrepreneurial challenge. This is not because the pay-off is the largest, but because winning it is the hardest. Whoever triumphs in Valencia next month will also win the right to control the next America’s Cup, the media rights and just about everything else associated with the event. For the losers, on the other hand, the millions they’ve invested will evaporate like ocean spray.

The America’s Cup is a UK event that, to Mills’ vexation, the seafaring British have never won. Last year’s winning team was Alinghi, who hail from landlocked Switzerland. A repeat performance by the Swiss this year will ensure that the event stays in Europe in 2009.

For Valencia, securing the America’s Cup has spearheaded a multibillion-euro regeneration of a city desperately in need of major investment. Other potential winners are the globe-straddling sponsors who hope to make a bigger splash than the carbon fibre racing yachts emblazoned with their fleetingly glimpsed logos.

Our in-depth coverage of the whole glittering affair is designed to give readers a real insight into this most European of contests.

Richard Lofthouse
Editor
richard.lofthouse@cnbceb.com