Thursday, November 20, 2008

Bruno Troublé talks to TV New Zealand about the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series

Bruno Trobulé, the creator of the Louis Vuitton Cup, talked to TV New Zealand's Martin Tasker about his latest venture in the professional sailing world, the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series, scheduled for next February in Auckland.

According to Troublé, the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series was born when Louis Vuitton felt "frustrated" after leaving the America's Cup and "sad" from the current legal fight and the lack of any sailing activity. Since there was no event planned, nothing to fill the void, they devised this simple event.

Troublé admitted they had never thought the event would turn out to be so successful and when asked to quantify it he would consider it to be so if it had 12 high-level teams racing, 7-8 thousand people visiting the race village every day and around 5-6 thousand boats on the water watching the races.

He basically has three goals with the event. First to simply help teams survive, as they at least offer their sponsors something. Second, to provide a key element that would keep the teams together and finally, hopefully, a platform for Alinghi and BMW Oracle to possibly rech a deal an put an end to their legal fight.

His closing remarks were probably the best indicator of what Louis Vuitton aims at with its involvement in the America's Cup; to run the show. For 25 years, Louis Vuitton organized the Louis Vuitton Cup and as a result influenced the fate of the America's Cup. On the contrary, in 2007 in Valencia, Louis Vuitton became just another sponsor and according to Troublé, its role was just to "sign checks". If the future defender of the world's oldest sports trophy agrees to Louis Vuitton's vision then the French group will come back. For that reason, Troublé didn't want to name the event in Auckland as Louis Vuitton Cup, in order not to diminish its value and keep it solely related to the America's Cup. Marketing 101.

Bruno Troublé talks about the Louis Vuitton Pacific Series. Auckland, 19 November 2008. Video copyright TV New Zealand

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1 Comments:

At 11:08 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

...in other words, Bruno needs to top up his retirement fund again by being able to clip the ticket one more time. Must have pained him to write the checks and not be clipping the ticket last time for ac 32. Just ask any of his suppliers how he operates.

 

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