While Naples speeds up preparations to host the thirty-eighth America’s Cup in 2027, the true weak point of the oldest trophy in international sport re-emerges from New York: its nature as a charitable trust, i.e. a fiduciary asset subject to special rules, not simply an event available to the current winner. It is on this ground that the action promoted by John Sweeney, former Cup man and now protester of the current model, fits: an initiative with uncertain outcomes, but sufficient to put the future governance of the event back under observation and, with it, the risk profile that accompanies Naples.
John Sweeney is neither a journalist nor an improvised protester: he is a historic insider of the Cup, a former high-level sailor, who passed through campaigns such as America True and Oracle, then active in the recovery and management of IACC boats. He is not neutral, on the contrary he has had a strongly orthodox vision of the Cup for years, hostile to the technological-commercial drift. But precisely for this reason his step deserves attention: he filed a complaint against the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron with the Charities Bureau of the New York Attorney General, and the file really exists. The first clarification, however, is decisive: we are not faced with a case already initiated in the Supreme Court, but with a complaint of alleged violations submitted to the Attorney General, who may do nothing, ask for clarifications or investigate further.
To make the picture more prudent there is a further element: the New York precedents place the Cup within the perimeter of the charitable trust, but from the 2026 documents it emerges that the Charities Bureau, at least in an initial phase, was still reconstructing the bases and boundaries of its possible intervention. A technical detail that confirms that the matter is still in an exploratory phase, and not a decision-making one.
Here lies the first fixed point. The game is not yet the one imagined by social media nor that of those who already fantasize about an imminent stop. This is underlined by Alessandra Pandarese, now active in the Milanese firm Bsva, but for decades close to the America’s Cup on a legal level, since the times of the Moro di Venezia and then in subsequent campaigns, alongside the team and organisation: «today we are faced with a complaint of alleged violations, not with an already mature proceeding. The chances of rapid intervention against the current Defender remain low; but the vulnerable point of the AC38 is not so much the current format itself, but the attempt to impose rules on the next Cup too. In other words: it is not said that the challenge in Naples is illegitimate, but it is legitimate to ask whether what will come tomorrow can also be blocked today.”
The question of governance
That point is not, or not only, Naples. It’s not the foils as such, nor the batteries, nor the taste for a more or less romantic Cup. The serious point is future governance. The official Protocol published on 12 August 2025 provides for the birth of the America’s Cup Partnership and explicitly opens up a system destined to extend beyond the Naples cycle. It is here that Sweeney’s protest, although burdened by excesses and forcing, touches a sensitive area. The Deed of Gift lives in cycles: Defender and Challenger of Record negotiate each time. If the current architecture really claimed to also pre-set the AC39 (dates, places, format, boats) the tension with the logic of the Deed would become real. This, not the social caricature, is the main weakness of the AC38 system.