Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: We might have to leave the America's Cup alone

Heather du Plessis-Allan Drive

As predictably as the clock striking 12 twice a day, here we are after an America's Cup win talking - yet again - about whether the Cup should be held in New Zealand.

In one corner, there's Helen Clark - who says Kiwis want to witness a successful event at home. And in the other corner, there's David Seymour who says we're too broke.

Look, I think I'm probably like most people - it'd be nice if it was here, but I just don't want us to waste money on it. This has, above all, got to be treated as a business decision.

Because that's what this is. It's a business decision for Grant Dalton. He will sell the hosting rights to the highest bidder, like he did this time round with Barcelona, who were prepared to pay more than we were to host the event.

And that is the right thing for him to do, he'd be a fool to take less than the highest offer.

And it is a business decision for New Zealand too, we should be preprepared to pay to host the cup - but no more than we can make off it. There's no point whatsoever in losing money on the America's Cup, which is what happened last time when we lost more than $150 million - which, to be fair, was exacerbated by Covid.

But we shouldn't be expecting any favours from Grant, just because he's a Kiwi citizen and we're a bunch of Kiwis.

And if we accept it’s a business decision, we have to strip out the lingering anger at Grant Dalton's attitude, we have to strip out the nonsense about sailing being an elitist sport and we have to strip out any kind of sentimentality about having a nice event here.

We don't 'deserve' a nice event if it's going to cost millions and millions of dollars that we don't have because we're broke.

This is a transaction, in which we want to make money. We want to come out in the black on this one.

And then, we also have to accept another fact - we're playing with the big boys and some of those guys have very deep pockets. So even if we put our best foot forward, it might not be enough and we have to leave it at that.

Because if the event comes back, it should be because New Zealand wants to make money off it - and no other reason.

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