A major item for the Challengers is to reach agreement of the format and scoring of the Challenger Selection Series (CSS) - the winner of which will go forward to face defender Alinghi.

"We have considered a number of formats and plans," says Ehman making it clear that he is speaking as Chairman of the Challenger Commission and not BMW Oracle who have their own spokespeople. "On the format issue, the one expected to be preferred for the CSS is to use a number of round robins, probably three".

The competitors race each other once starting in mid-April. Round Robin 1 might count for 1 point, RR2 for 2pts and RR3 for 3pts. After that the top four go onto the semi finals, and sail a best of nine match racing series, and same again for the Defender Final.

"This all happens from the middle of April to the middle of June - two months, when in the past it has taken four months".

Sailing for points in the build-up regattas, or Acts, was another of the initiatives introduced by Alinghi in their Grand Plan for the 2007 America's Cup. While bringing some needle into the regattas, now the Challengers have the vexed issue of how to use and apply them.

"The challenge has been how to use those Acts in a meaningful way, but such that we don't determine the challenger in 2006, before we start the Challenger Selection Series in 2007".

The idea that will be worked through in February is that the Act regattas will not be used for points in the CCS, but for "Perks". The use of points for 'perks' could mean that :
- the top seeded team will get to chose their opponent in the semi's (and this right does not fall to the team that has the most points out of the Round Robins, which is the way that it has been in the past) ;
- you get to choose the entry side of the starting lines for the first race ; ties could be broken in favour of the highest seeded team.

There could also be other non-racing things like where you get to march in the parade. Another minor issue is how to handle the points accumulated to date from the 2004 regattas but the challengers series format is decided by the Challengers as a group within the Challengers Commission. However it is still subject to the agreement of ACM.