Power Boat Race sponsor won’t go quietly

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

Stung when Key West City officials voted last month to approve a competitor’s proposal to sponsor the annual powerboat races, Super Boat International Productions, which has produced the popular race for over 30 years, came out recently with its guns blazing.

Threatening to go ahead with its five-day race at the same time the new sponsor, Race World Offshore (RWO), is planning to hold its power boat championship, an attorney representing SBIP said the U.S. Coast Guard, not the city, has the authority to grant permission to use Key West Harbor for special events.

“The Coast Guard has confirmed that our application is still being processed regardless of the city’s RFP [request for proposals],” said Albert Kelley, SBIP’s attorney. “The RFP did not eliminate Super Boat International Productions’ race. We’re still going forward and we’ll be racing Nov. 6 through 10 in Key West, just as we always planned.”

Kelley also threatened to sue both RWO and the city for alleged copyright infringement for initially using the phase “Key West World Championship” in the RFP and an early version of the proposed RWO contract. That phase is a registered trademark to SBIP, Kelley said.

“The Coast Guard has advised in writing that if Race World Offshore’s infringement carries over into their application they will be rejected, as an application must be original work and cannot duplicate another company’s work product,” Kelley said. In the latest RWO contract, the event name was changed to “Key West Annual Power Boat Championship Race.”

Kelley was short on details, however, on how race drivers would access the harbor to put in and take out their boats. The city has granted use in the past to Truman Waterfront Park, which butts up to the Outer Mole. Cranes are used there to raise and lower the speedboats into the water and the race takes place in the harbor just off the Outer Mole. But the new contract grants exclusive use of Truman Waterfront Park to RWO and it is unclear how, if it goes ahead, SBIP would find access to the harbor for the boats.

City officials discounted Kelley’s claims, saying that since the Coast Guard and U.S. Navy only grant permission for one race per year at the Outer Mole, the new RWO contract will prevail. City Manager Jim Scholl said the Coast Guard was waiting for the city to award the new contract before deciding which race application to approve.

“We have one annual power boat race event that we can do in conjunction with the Navy and the Outer Mole… and that is with the organization we have a contract with,” he said.

City Attorney Shawn Smith also downplayed any legal risk the new contract might open the city up to.

“It sounds like there is a dispute between the two companies,” Smith said, referring to SBIP and RWO. “And talking to staff, they said they took great care to ensure they didn’t infringe upon any of those issues.”

Satisfied, commissioners voted unanimously to award a five-year contract to RWO. A staff ranking of three proposals submitted in response to the RFP had rated RWO on top. One reason is that RWO said it would share revenue with the city, something that SBIP did not do. RWO promised to pay the city $3 per gate admission ticket, $3 per paid car in the Truman Waterfront remote parking lot, and $3 per VIP ticket sold. In addition, RWO also said it would pay all expenses related to police, fire and public services assistance during the races. SBIP had paid the first $35,000 of those expenses, with the city picking up any amount over that. In the past, the city has paid approximately $24,000 over the cap.

SBIP has already sued the city over the race contract. Kelley filed a lawsuit in April to force city officials to act on the November 2018 special events application SBIP filed with the city to produce this year’s race series. One month after that application was filed last year, SBIP was told the city was instead going to issue a request for proposals, opening up the race to other sponsoring organizations.

RWO has already tried once to snag sponsorship of the powerboat races away from SBIP. Last year, it offered to build a powerboat museum in the abandoned Keys Energy Diesel Plant in Bahama Village. Then-Mayor Craig Cates, a former powerboat racer himself, sponsored the resolution accepting the offer. However, it was then discovered that buried in the proposal language was a requirement that the city grant an exclusive five-year contract to RWO to host the annual powerboat race series. Once that was discovered, the resolution was voted down, with Cates saying he didn’t know about the contract clause.

One incentive SBIP may have to continue to push to host the races is a $120,000 grant approved by the Monroe County Tourist Development Council (TDC). The grant was approved before the city awarded RWO the new contract and would be used to reimburse SBIP for marketing and advertising expenses. If SBIP does not produce a race this year, it will lose the $120,000.

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