Ok, so I read this at Yachting World. They start to discuss how the next challenger of record is up in the air. Two teams have officially met the entry requirement under the existing protocol and Luna Rossa was the first of those teams. However, they discuss how the issue is that, under the current protocol, there isn't technically an event unless they have three official additional challengers and that Luna Rossa couldn't fulfill this roll unless another team anted up.

I'm not sure this is technically correct, however. The event is ultimately ruled by the Deed of Gift (DoG) and it specifies what needs to be done in order for someone to become the Challenger of Record (CoR). I would imagine that if the initial CoR drops out, anything negotiated between the Defender and the initial CoR would essentially be rubbish and whoever the next person to have lodged an official challenge would be next irrespective of the previously agreed to protocol. I haven't read the DoG in a while, but I'm quite sure it stipulates that the challenges are valid in the order they are received by the Defender.

Assuming that someone has already done that, it is then up to the Defender and the new CoR whether or not to use the existing protocol would be put back in place...so it shouldn't matter who the list of challengers are that meet the provisions in the protocol that was hammered out with Australia. It only matters who was the second team to officially challenge by the terms laid out in the DoG...and those don't require any down payment.

I would be surprised if other teams didn't officially challenge immediately after the finish of the last event "just in case"....or, maybe not? I imagine we would have heard them proclaim something if that were the case.