According to Cup sources, this is about as popular with challenging teams as an oil spill.
The signs are that there may well be more than four challengers. Emirates Team New Zealand, Artemis and Luna Rossa are all set to be involved along with Australia's Hamilton Island Yacht Club as the Challenger Of Record, funded by wine billionaire Bob Oatley. A British team (headed by former OTUSA team member Sir Ben Ainslie) is reported to be close to attracting enough funding to launch a challenge and a strong French challenge is syndicate forming under Yacht Club de France colours, though no signs yet that they have the money needed. Plus Korea (in particular) and China have been close to competing before.
But the word is that OTUSA backer Larry Ellison, having already spent something akin to NZ$1 billion on the Cup over a period of years, has told his chief executive, Sir Russell Coutts, to lessen Ellison's financial exposure. Asking the hosting nations in the World Series to bear the costs is one way of doing that, as is cutting the number of yachts at the Cup finals and shrinking the time taken to run the Louis Vuitton Cup and America's Cup races (the last one took place July 4-September 25).
"But you can see this from Bob Oatley's point of view," said one Cup source. "He's got to put all this money up and then gather more and he may not even get to the main event. It's a pretty hard thing to justify to sponsors - going there and asking for money and maybe not even getting to the America's Cup."
OTUSA's focus on costs also gels with an interview with Coutts in July when he talked about the need for credible challengers rather than relying on numbers.
"Let's be honest," he said then, "some of the teams in recent regattas have just been making up the numbers. There have probably been three or four teams that were a bit of a joke." He cited the first Swiss challenge in Auckland in 2000 as an example.
Meanwhile, it is not yet clear whether OTUSA's interest in other venues - San Diego has shaped as a possibility - is an effort to scare San Francisco into thinking that another US city could take their event or a genuine look at alternatives.
San Francisco's complex political landscape has seen their hosting offer reduced from last time. Official figures suggest that San Francisco taxpayers finished up US$5.5 million in the red after being told they would benefit. The 700,000 people drawn to the city over the three months spent about US$364m - rather less than the US$902m projected and way less than the $US1.4 billion originally held under the city's nose as a sweet-smelling incentive.
That has led to Coutts suggesting San Diego or Hawaii (Ellison owns the island of Lanai there) and traditional America's Cup venues like Newport, Rhode Island, could yet come into play. However, the giant catamarans favoured for the America's Cup are not deepwater craft and the big swells and deep waters of Hawaii will not suit them. Nor is there thought to be a venue there which can get spectators and cameras so close to the action to provide some of the thrills witnessed in San Francisco. San Diego, Cup sources say, could host such in-harbour racing at a pinch.
San Francisco remains everyone's favourite but, as ever with the America's Cup, if another venue comes up with the right money for Ellison and Coutts, the city's acquaintance with the Cup could be brief.
