Wasserman and Ueberroth to advise America’s Cup team

Casey Wasserman and Peter Ueberroth are amongst five 'prominent leaders in sports, entertainment and business' appointed to the Advisory Board of the 34th America's Cup as the organising committee continues its development.

The next America's Cup is scheduled for San Francisco in September next year but the new America's Cup World Series, already underway, has been designed to provide a continuous narrative to an event traditionally bound by its history.

L. Jay Cross, a former president of the New York Jets; Geoffrey Mason, a former executive producer at ABC; former YankeeNets chairman Harvey Schiller; Ueberroth, who led the organising committee for the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984; and Wasserman, founder of Wasserman Media Group have all been appointed with another to be announced later in the year.

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“The calibre of the individual board members and collective experience represents a huge asset to the America’s Cup,” said Larry Ellison, team owner of Oracle Team USA.

The San Francisco-based organising team, which took control of the event after Ellison's team won the 33rd Cup for the city's Golden Gate Yacht Club has made an estimated US$100 million investment in broadcast technologies to develop the America's Cup brand as a television proposition.

Broadcast rights deals have been secured with NBC in the United States, Sky Sports in the United Kingdom and Mediaset in Italy, although attracting sponsorship has thus far proved more of a struggle.

In March America's Cup Event Authority chairman Richard Worth was switched to work exclusively on developing the America's Cup World Series' commercial programme, with ACEA Stephen Barclay taking up the chief executive reins on a temporary basis.