The America's Cup: Economic Impacts of a Match - Bay Area Council

The possibility of and size of a defender series.
The number of spectators, both local and non-local.
The number of super yachts on the Bay during the America's Cup.
Given these uncertainties, this section presents results that provide some guidance for how to think about different
scenarios should San Francisco be chosen as the location of the next America's Cup defense. The implications
of pre-Cup regattas are clearly significant, but we are not able to estimate them here with any certainty. A simple
calculation suggests that their impact could be considerable. Lasting perhaps two weeks, pre-Cup regattas are
approximately 15% of a combined Challenger Series and America's Cup defense in duration, with implications for
organizers, spectators, media, and super yachts, in particular. Taking 15% of these agents' expenditures as estimated
above, these events could easily add in excess of $125 million per event. This is a very conservative estimate
as there would clearly be additional expenditures by the syndicates and others.
The possibility of a defender series has been factored into the results presented above. The defender series adds
about 10% to the economic impact. This estimate is quite uncertain as there is no way to know at this time how
many U.S. based challenges to BMW/Oracle there might be. We have assumed 3, but it could be more or less. However,
it can be expected that the introduction of an additional syndicate in the defender series would add about
1.5%, or about $20 million, to the overall impact of the America's Cup on the local economy.
Spectators are a significant wild card in the analysis. We have assumed that local spectators would be just over
two times their size in Valencia, 2007 and that non-local spectators would be the same as was experienced in 2007.
Because of San Francisco's large base of potential spectators and its reputation as a leading tourist destination,
these assumptions are reasonably conservative. We have also assumed that expenditures would be comparable.
If these are under-estimates of either the number of spectators or their expenditures, which is likely, the local
impact would likely be higher. For local spectators, a 10% increase in either their expenditures or the numbers
would result in an increase in overall output in San Francisco of $25.2 million, or 218 jobs. For foreign spectators,
a similar increase of 10% would increase output by $14.4 million or 118 jobs.
Finally, we have estimated that the presence of super yachts on the Bay would be 50% less than was assumed for
Valencia, with total expenditures of $11.3 million in San Francisco. In the event that super yachts were to come in
similar numbers to Valencia, the overall impact would be increased by $11.3 million, with the creation of another
34