After making a substantial splash at the Olympics — its brand ambassador Léon Marchand scored four gold medals in the pool — Louis Vuitton is moving on to bigger waters as the title sponsor of sailing’s most prestigious race, the America’s Cup, which gets underway in earnest this week in Barcelona.
“Our proximity to sports is not new,” said Pietro Beccari, chairman and chief executive officer of Louis Vuitton, whose connection to the America’s Cup dates back to 1983. “But I think we are in a very strong position to reinforce this position.”
Indeed, having seen young people jockeying for tickets at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, and euphoria erupting across France during the event which wrapped Aug. 11, Beccari said sports are very much “in the air” — and closer than ever to fashion and luxury.
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“I tell my sales associates in the stores that they don’t just sell products. They sell what we stand for —overcoming your limits, going above and beyond, and I think sports embody that, too,” said the executive, who once played soccer professionally. “We stand for optimism. We stand for victory. We stand for challenging yourself and challenging your limits all the time. This is the spirit.”
All of the above bodes well for the Louis Vuitton 37th America’s Cup, which kicks off with the Louis Vuitton Cup round robins on Thursday and winds up toward the end of October.
Professional sailor Grant Dalton, CEO of the America’s Cup event, told WWD qualifying races in Barcelona have already racked up 714 million views online, meaning the event will surely surpass the 914 million views achieved overall at 2021’s races in Auckland, New Zealand.
In an interview, he credited such huge audiences to the free-to-air policy of America’s Cup, rare at most sporting events, where broadcast rights rank as a chief revenue stream. “TV is a 20 million euro cost for us to help build the sport,” Dalton said.
Beccari let slip that a documentary is being filmed about this edition of the America’s Cup, which could do for sailing what the Netflix series “Formula 1: Drive to Survive” did for car racing — fan its global popularity, and attract younger generations and more women to the sport.
In another effort to entice new fans, organizers devised an e-series livestreamed on Twitch, with the inaugural edition offering six exceptional players the chance to come to Barcelona on Sept. 28 and “race” in its cutting-edge simulators. “Gamers to sailors” is how Dalton described the project, noting youngsters from Venezuela, Hungary and New Zealand have already won a chance to make the leap from “bedroom to the water.”
The Youth & Puig Women’s America’s Cup, held concurrently, should also heighten the sport’s profile.
Dalton, who is also CEO of Emirates Team New Zealand, the defender since 2017, faced controversy when he decided to stage the 2024 America’s Cup in Spain rather than in the home country of the 2021 cup victor New Zealand, deeming the latter option financially unfeasible given the country’s economic challenges.
Also, “we needed to be in a time zone and a population base [that] is infinitely bigger than New Zealand,” he said. “We needed to move it into a bigger market from a sponsorship point of view.”
The 2024 edition is already a main attraction in Barcelona, where anyone within view of the water can take in the racing, since it’s held close to shore around Port Vell and along the beach to Port Olímpic.
Dalton, who has raced around the world seven times, also trumpeted that the boats themselves are a star attraction as “the most sophisticated, technologically advanced and certainly the fastest boats that have ever competed in the America’s Cup.”
Having Vuitton as title sponsor, and organizer of the qualifying stages, is another bonus: “They bring prestige, they bring an element of glamour, they have an amazing marketing ability, and they just bring panache,” Dalton enumerated. “It’s like mum and apple pie: The America’s Cup without Louis Vuitton is not the America’s Cup.”
Five challengers in the Louis Vuitton Cup regattas — Ineos Britannia, Alinghi Red Bull Racing, Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli, NYYC American Magic and Orient Express Racing — will battle it out on the water to face off with Emirates Team New Zealand for the big prize.
Dalton described yacht sailing as a “technology sport,” analogous to Formula 1, since only a dozen members of each 150-strong team are sailors. “So if you can’t be a significant player in the technology race, you will get beaten,” he said.
In an interview, Beccari noted that “the technology of filming” the sleek sailing yachts is also making a quantum leap with the 37th edition, thanks to helicopters, drones and on-screen graphics, which should make it easier for newcomers to understand how the dueling teams are faring, and when mistakes are looming.
Vuitton has played a role in America’s Cup races in the U.S., Australia, Bermuda, Hong Kong, Dubai, France and Spain, burnishing the regattas’ visibility and prestige. Vuitton was last the title partner of the America’s Cup in 2017 in Bermuda.
The brand has recently ramped up its links to many sports, signing up a clutch of high-profile ambassadors including tennis player Carlos Alcaraz, basketball player Victor Wembanyama, and rugby player Antoine Dupont, all of whom won medals at the Summer Olympic Games, where parent company LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton was a premium partner.
Vuitton has also recently run ad campaigns featuring iconic duos, such as soccer stars Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, or tennis legends Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer.
Asked about what Vuitton might gain from being title sponsor of the America’s Cup, Beccari replied: “It’s very difficult to understand what a specific event brings you. I believe in a series of events, a series of things that makes your brand desirable,” he said. “We strongly believe, with our guts, that the Olympics, the America’s Cup, what we did at the Grand Prix de Monaco, what we do with tennis, is strengthening the desirability of our brand, also with young generations.”
Beccari concurred with Dalton that yacht sailing remains an “emerging” sport.
“But I think it is very sophisticated and when we talk about travel, I would say that the sea is the way that people started traveling across continents,” he said. “So I think there is a certain link to the world of travel of Louis Vuitton.…It seems very natural that we accompany the America’s Cup back to Europe.”
He also highlighted the “romantic” aspect of yacht sailing, since the victor decides the timing, rules, format and sponsors for the next America’s Cup, giving each edition a unique character.
Vuitton hosted a massive kickoff party Tuesday night at a mountaintop amusement park, which attracted the likes of Marchand and his fellow Olympian Pau Echaniz, a Spanish slalom canoeist who took home a bronze medal.
Vuitton plans to host hundreds of VICs in Barcelona over the coming months, as well as journalists and various local dignitaries.
In addition, it crafted the Louis Vuitton Cup trophy and — at the historical Louis Vuitton atelier in Asnières — two trunks for the Louis Vuitton Cup and the America’s Cup.
The Auld Mug is the silver trophy handed to the winner of the America’s Cup since 1851, considered the oldest international sports trophy in the world. Meanwhile, the Louis Vuitton Cup has been presented to the winner of the eponymous qualifying-stage competition since 1983.
There’s fashion, too. A nautical-themed capsule collection has been on sale online and in Vuitton boutiques since mid-July and selling so briskly — headlined by windbreakers, tops, caps and other accessories — Beccari said it’s likely to sell out well before the end of the Louis Vuitton Cup leg.
Nicolas Ghesquière and Pharrell Williams, Vuitton’s artistic directors for women’s and men’s collections respectively, contributed to the line, which boasts a graphic “V” originally designed by Gaston-Louis Vuitton, grandson of the founder.
The capsule includes the LV Rush sneaker, which Ghesquière unveiled as part of his cruise 2024 collection for Vuitton, and it reprises a striped theme seen in Williams’ debut spring 2024 collection.
Beccari said he hopes to entice both men to spend a weekend in Barcelona and be seduced by the spectacle. “I love spending vacation on boats and on the sea,” he said.
