Ineos and Ratcliffe need a sporting win and fast
“Ineos Britannia announces that it has withdrawn its intention to challenge for the next America’s Cup.” Those were the words issued this week in the latest sporting scaleback by British chemicals billionaire Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
The stream of negative news out of Manchester United – including hundreds of job losses, brutal cost-cutting and criticism over a lack of enthusiasm for the women’s team – may have slowed slightly but Ratcliffe’s increasingly manic sporting strategy continues to develop on a seemingly weekly basis.
The latest falling out, with Sir Ben Ainslie and the British sailing team Ineos sponsored last year, reached its crescendo this week with Ineos’s withdrawal from the America’s Cup – leaving Ainslie’s splinter Athena Racing Ltd as the sole British representative.
The statement claims that an agreement had been reached to allow both teams to compete, but delays – they say – have put them on the back foot in developing a challenger for the next America’s Cup. Hence the withdrawal.
Ratcliffe said: “We were the most successful British challenger in modern times with an exceptionally quick boat and we felt with the very effective input from the Mercedes F1 engineers that we had a real chance to win at the next Cup. Unfortunately, the opportunity has slipped away.”
Indicative of rocky Ineos patch
But the America’s Cup debacle seems indicative of a rocky period for Ineos since Ratcliffe’s minority purchase of Manchester United brought with it a level of publicity and scrutiny the company hadn’t experienced beforehand.
The firm has settled a legal suit brought by New Zealand Rugby over the early termination of a sponsorship agreement, is looking to end an agreement with Tottenham Hotspur, and is on the hunt for a second title sponsor for their Grenadiers grand tour cycling team.
The Mercedes Formula 1 team, of which Ineos owns a third, haven’t won a race since the Las Vegas Grand Prix last year and are without a championship since the domination of Max Verstappen and Red Bull. The one boundary-pushing achievement – Eliud Kipchoge’s sub-two hour marathon – looks increasingly like a flash in the pan.
Manchester United are closer to the Premier League’s relegation places than the top three, and sister clubs Nice and FC Lausanne-Sport are unlikely to challenge for titles any time soon. To put it simply: it’s not going well.
Turn the tide
And it is hard to turn the tide under a spotlight as big as the one on Ineos. Since the acquisition of 27 per cent of Manchester United, the company known for chemicals has been a daily story.
What Ratcliffe needs now is on-pitch or on-track success, and quickly. Manchester United’s FA Cup victory last year was a bright spark in a dim year for the firm’s sporting arm, as was Lewis Hamilton’s victory at Silverstone.
But Ineos’s association with sport isn’t reflecting the feelgood factor it once did. When Ratcliffe was announced as an investor in United – instead of Qatari cash – he was heralded as a saviour from the ruling Glazer family. Instead there are already fan protests.
It is difficult to predict where the next major win comes from for Ineos but for the sake of the operation’s sporting reputation it could do with it coming soon, and it being the first of many.