The close involvement of the Mercedes Formula One team, in which Ineos has a one-third shareholding, with its Americas Cup setup may offer a clue about Ratcliffe’s definition of a sure thing.
A shocked Sir Ben Ainslie clearly felt that way last month when his Athens Racing team promised “significant legal and practical obstacles” for Ineos after they announced they would part ways for this year’s Americas Cup.
Ineos has elected to cut short its six-year performance partnership, worth around £4.3m annually, at the halfway mark and showed little remorse in a statement that cited “the deindustrialisation of Europe” among factors behind its need to cost-save.
Perhaps Ratcliffe looked at rugby’s precarious broader picture and decided the payoff of Ineos’s logo appearing on All Blacks and Black Ferns kits was a frippery.
Ratcliffe has never hidden the fact that controlling costs is an obsession across his business but there is little evidence in a hyper-competitive football industry that applying the scythe will bring short or even medium-term success.
