The round-the-world Volvo Ocean Race "is attracting new teams after cutting costs in half by making competitors use identical 65-foot yachts instead of building their own boats," according to Joao Lima of BLOOMBERG. Seven teams are competing, up from six in the '11-12 race, and Volvo Ocean Race CEO Knut Frostad said that "he hopes as many as three more boats will be built for the next edition." With changes including shared maintenance, race organizers said that the cost of a campaign in the '14-15 race is between €12M ($13.5M) and €14M ($15.7M), down from more than €25M ($28M). The €4.5M ($5M) boats "were also designed to be re-used in the next race in three years." Mark Turner, exec chairman of OC Sport, the management company of third-ranked Dongfeng Race Team from China, said, "Without the move to one-design, there wouldn’t be the Chinese team. It leveled the playing field." Team Brunel skipper Bouwe Bekking said, "In the previous races the teams with the most money and probably as
well the best development programs, they would nine out of 10 times
win. But this
time it’s just the best team will win." At sea, the seven boats "have
access to the same meteorological information and are restricted to 25
megabytes of data on average per day." Billionaire Larry Ellison spent at least $100M on
Oracle Team USA’s successful campaign in '13 (BLOOMBERG, 6/16).
