The New York Yacht Club, whose Harbour Court clubhouse sits on Halidon Avenue, has asked the New York attorney general’s Charities Bureau to examine whether the newly created America’s Cup Partnership can be reconciled with the Deed of Gift, the charitable trust that has governed the trophy since the 19th century.
Commodore Clare Harrington announced the request Monday. The club is not suing. It is asking the bureau, which supervises charitable trusts in New York, to review how the trust is being administered and to obtain the Partnership Agreements, which have not been made public.
“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 reorganized at will,” Harrington said. She said the club’s concerns are directed at the legal structure and the process by which it was adopted, not at the sportsmanship of any competitor.
Under the Deed, the club holding the Cup acts as trustee, and the terms of each match are set cycle by cycle between that club, the Defender, and the first qualifying challenger, the Challenger of Record. The current Defender is the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron, represented by Emirates Team New Zealand; the Challenger of Record is Britain’s Royal Yacht Squadron, represented by Athena Racing. The two signed the protocol for the 38th America’s Cup in August 2025, to be sailed in Naples in 2027.
That protocol created the America’s Cup Partnership, a body intended to plan, manage, organize and commercialize the America’s Cup across ongoing event cycles, holding the rights, contracts and revenues associated with the event. Five founding teams were announced in December: Emirates Team New Zealand, Athena Racing, Luna Rossa, Alinghi and K-Challenge.
The New York Yacht Club’s central objection is that the partnership is permanent while the Deed’s structure is not. It contends the Deed vests governance in each cycle’s Defender and Challenger of Record and authorizes no standing body apart from them, and that a body setting terms for matches between clubs not yet identified displaces the mutual consent the Deed requires.
The club also points to Article 13.1 of the protocol, under which a qualified club that declines to join the partnership may have its challenge rejected without unanimous approval of the partnership’s board. The club argues that subordinates a right the Deed grants freely to any qualifying club to the discretion of a private body made up of existing competitors.
Taken together, the club says, the changes would turn the Cup from an open challenge trophy into a periodic, centrally organized regatta — a change to the trust’s charitable purpose that in its view requires modification of the Deed and approval of the New York courts.
The position is a reversal for the club. When the protocol was announced in August 2025, then-Commodore Jay Cross said the club was “completely supportive of the move to modernise the oldest sporting trophy in the world.” Two months later, American Magic, which had represented the club in the 2021 and 2024 Cups, announced it would not enter the 38th edition, citing a review of the protocol and Partnership Agreement.
That withdrawal is what put Newport in the middle of this. With no American Magic entry, the 2027 Cup was on track to be the first since 1851 without a U.S. boat. In April, as What’sUpNewp reported, American Racing Challenger Team USA was confirmed as an official challenger representing Sail Newport, the nonprofit founded in 1983 after the Cup left Newport. The team is led by Newport sailor Ken Read and backed by entrepreneurs Karel Komárek and Chris Welch, and acquired American Magic’s AC75 Patriot and two AC40s. Sail Newport is run by Read’s brother, Brad Read.
Sail Newport’s challenge was accepted under the same protocol and partnership structure the New York Yacht Club is now asking the state to examine.
The club is also not the first to bring the matter to the Charities Bureau. A complaint filed in February by former Cup sporting director John Sweeney against the Royal New Zealand Yacht Squadron opened File No. 26-020937, alleging the partnership was created without court approval or attorney general consent.
Newport hosted every America’s Cup match from 1930 until 1983, when the New York Yacht Club’s 132-year defense ended with Australia II’s win off Rhode Island Sound.
