The first tickets are up for grabs for the America’s Cup World Series, and it’s the event in Portsmouth this summer that benefits.

Ben Ainslie Racing will have the home advantage when they compete in the Solent for the America’s World Cup Series

The Portsmouth round of the America’s Cup World Series takes place in the Solent from July 23-26 with around 140,000 people expected to watch the racing at sea and on big screens set up around the city.

Paid-for tickets will be available for a range of prices from £20 to £395 for hospitality packages. Organisers have set aside 10,000 free tickets for residents of the famous maritime city of Portsmouth to ensure they get a front row view of some of the biggest names in sailing. Those big names include Sir Ben Ainslie, who hails from Lymington, just a few miles west along the Solent, and is leading a British bid to win the famous cup.

Ben Ainslie announced Great Britain’s bid for the 2017 America’s Cup

Sir Ben Ainslie, who is a Boat International columnist, launched his bid to compete in the 35th America’s Cup in 2017 last summer, supported by the Duchess of Cambridge. Ben Ainslie Racing aims to win the 163-year-old trophy for Great Britain for the first time since the first America’s Cup race took place off the Isle of Wight in 1851. The Portsmouth round of racing will be the first time a British America’s Cup team will race in an official America’s Cup event in UK waters since that date. The sailors compete on foiling, wingsailed catamarans. It is the first stage of competition in the 2017 America’s Cup and overall ranking position in the series determines the starting points score of the teams in the America’s Cup Qualifiers in 2017.

Sir Ben’s team base is Portsmouth and apart from being cheered on by a sizeable army of home supporters, he will be able to utilise his intimate knowledge of the Solent’s complex tides and tricky shallows to gain an advantage.

The series also takes place in the home bases of the other teams, Gothenburg, Bermuda and Cagliari, but tickets to these venues have not been released yet.

America’s World Cup Series dates:
Cagliari, Sardinia, – June 5-7, 2015
Gothenburg, Sweden – August 28-30, 2015
Hamilton, Bermuda – October 16-18, 2015

To book your ticket to the Portsmouth America’s Cup World Series, visithttp://www.ticketmaster.co.uk/ACWSPortsmouth

Source : http://www.boatinternational.com/2015/03/02/first-tickets-up-for-grabs-for-americas-cup-world-series-in-portsmouth/