On April 8th, no less than 26 applicants will be in the "Palau de Congresos" of Valencia for the first meeting of interested teams for the 32nd Defense.

During the meeting, ACM will release details about the marketing plan for the event, the services that will be provided to the teams, and the challenger bases to be located in the new AC Village, " El Bacon de Mar ".

The validity of any of these teams must be relativized (an "interested team" doesn't necessarily become a competitor), but this figure is in itself a good surprise.

It's also a real success for ACM which has to be linked with the signing of an amended protocol and the publication of the Terms of Challenge.

As Michel Bonnefous underlined in January, with these two fundamental documents, the organizers of the 32nd America's Cup " are providing strong support to all teams in a number of significant areas ".

In spite of Chris Dickson has said that $100 million is a "realistic" budget for 2007, smallest budgets seem now possible with this new documents (€ 30/40 million).

The challenge deadline is 17 December 2004. Challengers will be accepted after that date until 29 April, 2005 if accompanied by a late fee.