By becoming Global Cruises Partner of the 38th America’s Cup, to be held in Naples in 2027, MSC Cruises continues a sports partnership strategy that reaffirms its Mediterranean roots.
Some partnerships are first of all a matter of marketing calculation, and others seem to renew an obvious geographical tie. The new agreement between MSC Cruises and the America’s Cup undoubtedly belongs to both categories at once: by becoming “Global Cruises Partner” of the 38th edition of the world’s oldest sailing competition, created in 1851, to be held in Naples in 2027, the Geneva-based company reconnects with its Mediterranean roots while gaining worldwide visibility.
The agreement covers the entire programme of the competition, from the preliminary regattas to the Youth and Women’s America’s Cup events, including the challenger selection regattas through to the final matches. “This partnership allows MSC Cruises to join one of the most emblematic stages of international sport, at a time when the America’s Cup is returning to the Mediterranean, to Naples,” summarises Pierfrancesco Vago, the company’s Executive Chairman. A way for the brand to associate its image with values it already claims for its own fleet: innovation, precision, team spirit and passion for the sea.
This new agreement does not come out of nowhere: in 2024, Explora Journeys, the luxury cruise brand of the same Cruise Division of the MSC Group, was Global Partner of the 37th America’s Cup in Barcelona, alongside Emirates Team New Zealand. MSC Cruises thus places this partnership within a broader strategy of sporting visibility, which already includes its status as Global Partner of Formula 1, premium partner of the BWT Alpine Formula One Team and official principal partner of the Tudor Pro Cycling Team — a portfolio that spans several sporting disciplines rather than concentrating on a single universe.
For Marzio Perrelli, CEO of the America’s Cup Partnership, this rapprochement rests as much on image as on shared values: “MSC Cruises is a valuable global partner for the America’s Cup […] A prestigious partner, MSC Cruises shares our values and maintains, like us, a deep bond with the sea. This closeness provides every condition for building a lasting relationship.” A statement which, beyond the conventional wording, underlines how the sailing competition, for its part, also seeks to consolidate long-term partnerships rather than one-off sponsorships.
The competition’s return to the Mediterranean after the Barcelona edition is also a strong signal for the whole tourism and sporting ecosystem of the region: Naples, a historic port city, thus becomes the stage for an event expected to attract an international audience well beyond sailing enthusiasts alone, and from which MSC Cruises evidently intends to benefit in order to establish its brand in the collective imagination of the sailing competition.
It remains to be seen how this alliance, between cruise ships and high-performance foiling AC75-class sailboats, will translate concretely for passengers — beyond the symbol, always easy to display, of a shared passion for the Mediterranean, the sea that will host in 2027 both the fastest foils in the world of sailing and the largest ships of the MSC Group.
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