In a year’s time, Barcelona will host the America’s Cup for the first time, the most important sailing competition on the planet. A fact that will mark from different points of view the 61st edition of the Barcelona International Boat Show, which starts this Wednesday and will last until Sunday. One of the driving events of this sector in Spain will act as a promotional tool for the historic regatta born in 1851. At the same time, the coincidence has posed an organizational challenge for the exhibition carried out by Fira de Barcelona with the collaboration of the Association National Nautical Companies (Anen).
The president of the Boat Show, Luis Conde, already warned during the presentation: “As a fundamental actor in the development of the sector, this year we could not stop contributing to the promotion and promotion of the America’s Cup,” he said. “We will be a connecting bridge between the city and the largest sailing competition in the world so that visitors can discover the details of the emblematic regatta and share the passion for sailing and the sea,” he added.
This translates into activities and talks about the Copa del América. Several of them will be held at the Port of Barcelona stand, annexed to the show. For example, this Thursday there will be a reception and presentation of the participating teams, which will be attended by two sailors from each formation and the CEO of the regatta, Grant Dalton.
Admission to the Boat Show will mean a discount on the America’s Cup Experience exhibition, the competition’s dissemination center located in the old Imax. In addition, coinciding with the fair, a simulator will be released that, thanks to technologies such as virtual reality, imitates the experience of sailing with competition boats.
However, the organization of the Boat Show expects that the conjunction between both events will lead to an increase in visitors. The goal is to exceed the 50,000 attendees that were reached last year.
However, the America’s Cup has also been an organizational challenge for the Boat Show. The team bases share the space with the fair, so they have been forced to carry out a new distribution of the spaces. Finally, there will be a total of 22,000 m2 of exhibition space.
In Port Vell there will be 240 exhibitors and 160 boats will be part of the floating exhibition. Twenty of them will be catamarans. In addition, there will also be eight sailboats candidates for European boat of the year and two fully electric boats. And at the boat show we will once again talk about electrification, sustainability, innovation and the blue economy. Leading brands such as Beneteau, De Antonio Yachts, Jeanneau or Rodman, among others, will be present in Barcelona.
