There are claims from America's Cup and Team New Zealand CEO Grant Dalton that taking the regatta to Barcelona has already paid off. 

It comes ahead of racing starting tonight, with the final preliminary regatta leading into the Louis Vuitton Cup starting late next week. 

The move to ditch Auckland for Spain was highly controversial, but Dalton told Mike Hosking they had a combined audience of 914 million for the 2021 regattas and already they're closing in on that with preliminaries. 

He says a couple of years ago people in the Catalan city might have thought the America's Cup was the Copa America football tournament, but not now. 

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