The New York Yacht Club, the Trophy's first trustee under the Deed of Gift, has asked the New York Attorney General to protect the document, arguing that a new perpetual governing body is incompatible with the charitable trust that has governed the Cup for more than 160 years. Naples 2027 is not at risk, but the ACP will need to answer some questions.
Not just John Sweeney, the American sailor who first took the recent direction of the America's Cup to court. Not just the mysterious letter that did the rounds on social media a few days ago, addressed to that same Attorney General's Charities Bureau. Now the New York Yacht Club has weighed in itself, and it's hard to think of a body with a stronger claim to speak on this. This is the club that won the trophy with the schooner America at Cowes in 1851, became its first trustee, and held it for 132 years, the very institution that built the Cup's legend in the first place. The Attorney General's office must be getting tired of hearing its name. A new push arrives almost daily now, and staying silent, or simply waving the requests away, is starting to look untenable. A hearing in the New York Supreme Court feels closer than it did a week ago.
To be clear about what's actually at stake: the 38th edition, the Louis Vuitton America's Cup in Naples in 2027, is not in danger. Nothing here stops the Defender and Challenger racing each other. What's under real pressure is the AC Partnership itself, the arrangement binding the Trophy holder and the challengers together, and by extension binding whoever wins the Cup and becomes its next trustee. This is only the opening move. Below is the NYYC's letter, dated 31 August 2026.
The joint response from the Defender and Challenger of Record landed a few hours later: "We welcome the NYYC's request." Their position, boiled down, is that the Deed of Gift hasn't been touched, and that every decision taken traces back to its rules. Whether that welcome is genuine confidence or gritted teeth is hard to say from the outside. It could easily be both. The AC Partnership runs to hundreds of pages and has been through plenty of legal review already, so there's a reasonable case for confidence. But there's also a pointed line in the statement noting that every step of the ACP and the Protocol was shared with the NYYC as it happened, which reads less like an afterthought and more like a club making sure that point doesn't get lost.
Below is the letter from the NYYC, followed by the statement from RNZYS and RYS.
NEW YORK, NY — New York Yacht Club Commodore Clare Harrington, the Club's first female Commodore, announced today that the Club has asked the New York Attorney General's Charities Bureau to review whether the newly formed America's Cup Partnership ("ACP") complies with the Deed of Gift, the 1887 charitable trust instrument that has governed the America's Cup since the trophy was first placed in trust in New York.
The New York Yacht Club ("NYYC") has filed a request with the Attorney General's Charities Bureau, which oversees charitable trusts in this State, to review the newly formed ACP against the terms of the America's Cup Deed of Gift (the "Deed").
The core question. Does the America's Cup remain, in the words of the founding document, a "perpetual challenge cup for friendly competition between foreign countries," or can it be turned into a centrally managed, commercially controlled regatta run by a permanent body made up of the incumbent competitors?
The America's Cup trophy was won by the schooner America in 1851 and given, by deed, to the NYYC in 1857 to be held in trust as an international challenge trophy. Under the Deed, the club currently holding the Cup acts as its custodian. The terms of each challenge are agreed cycle by cycle between that club, the Defender, and the first qualified challenger, the Challenger of Record. That two-party arrangement has run the event for more than 150 years, renewed each time by whichever clubs happen to hold and challenge for the Cup. The Deed itself has been amended only a handful of times, and always by order of the New York courts.
The NYYC argues that the ACP, set up under the Protocol for the 38th America's Cup along with a set of related "Partnership Agreements" that haven't been made public, breaks from that structure in several fundamental ways:
A permanent authority the Deed never contemplated. The ACP is built to govern the organisation, rules and commercial rights of every future America's Cup, regardless of who holds or challenges for the Cup at the time. The NYYC says the Deed puts that authority in the hands of the Defender and Challenger of Record for each cycle, and nowhere else.
A potential barrier to the right to challenge. Under Article 13.1 of the Protocol, a qualified club that won't join the ACP could have its challenge turned down without unanimous sign-off from the ACP Board. The NYYC's view is that this hands a right the Deed grants freely to any qualifying club over to the discretion of a private body made up of existing competitors.
Rules being written for matches that haven't happened yet. The NYYC contends a body claiming authority to fix the terms of future matches, between clubs not yet even identified, cuts across the mutual-consent process the Deed actually requires.
A lack of transparency. According to the NYYC, a restructuring of this size has gone ahead without the Partnership Agreements being disclosed to interested yacht clubs, or, as far as the Club is aware, to the Attorney General, and without New York court approval.
A possible shift in the trust's underlying purpose. Put together, the NYYC argues, these changes would turn the America's Cup from an open challenge trophy into a periodic, centrally run regatta, a shift to the trust's charitable purpose that, in the Club's view, needs both an amendment to the Deed and sign-off from the New York courts.
"The America's Cup has endured for more than 170 years because the Deed of Gift provides a durable legal framework that cannot simply be reorganised at will," Commodore Harrington said. "We hold the deepest respect for the competition and for every club that has held the Cup. Precisely because of that respect, we believe these questions deserve careful review under New York law, so that whatever governance the Cup carries forward rests on a sound legal foundation and preserves the open challenge that makes the Cup what it is."
Harrington was careful to draw a line between the legal question and the sporting one. The Club's concerns, she said, sit with the ACP's legal structure and the process behind it, not with any competitor's sportsmanship, and what it's after is review and clarification of the Deed in light of the ACP, under New York law.
"We are asking the Attorney General's Charities Bureau to review the trustee's administration of the trust and to obtain the undisclosed Partnership Agreements for examination," Harrington said.
The Club has asked the Charities Bureau to weigh up whether the ACP structure holds up against the rights and obligations set out in the Deed, and whether further action or judicial review is warranted.
The response, a joint statement from the Defender (Emirates Team New Zealand) and the Challenger of Record (GB1), followed a few hours later.
Statement from RNZYS & RYS Ltd, as Defender and Challenger of Record, in response to the NYYC:
"The Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, the Defender of the America's Cup represented by Emirates Team New Zealand, and Royal Yacht Squadron Ltd, the Challenger of Record, represented by GB1, welcome the query by the New York Yacht Club. The NYYC was consulted throughout the development of the ACP and supportive of its formation. Respecting the Deed of Gift was central to this process throughout. Notably, the Protocol for the 38th America's Cup that will be held in Naples in 2027 was established by mutual consent between the Defender and the Challenger of Record under the terms set out within the Deed of Gift."
This article originally appeared in saily.it. Reproduced with permission.
