Russell Coutts, the CEO of SailGP, a professional regatta series, believes that sailing can become a new crowd puller because of this event. Coutts, an accomplished sailor with five America's Cup wins, a 1984 Olympic victory and two World Sailor of the Year awards, co-founded SailGP in 2018 with Larry Ellison, the founder and chairman of Oracle. SailGP is a regatta series sailed on foiling catamarans with a length of 50 feet. The series is currently in its fourth season and includes teams from ten different countries such as the USA, New Zealand, Australia and Great Britain. Germany is also represented, with former Formula 1 world champion Sebastian Vettel among the team members.
This season, 13 events will be held around the world. The next races will take place on 24 and 25 February in Sydney Harbour, while the season ends in June and July with events in New York and San Francisco.
The SailGP is growing steadily
What makes Coutts so confident are the key figures for the event. "We started with six teams in the first year. Now we have ten," he told Time Magazine. He continued: "All six of those teams were funded by the league. Now five of the ten teams are funded by investors who have bought the rights to those teams. And we're on the verge of two more sales. So seven of the ten teams are financed from outside. And we will add two more teams in the fifth season."
He also wants to increase the number of events: "We started with five events in the first season. Now we have 13, and we want to try to get to more than 20, with a race every fortnight or so. That's roughly what Formula 1 has.
The SailGP could become Formula 1
Coutts also believes he can reach their audience reach. According to SailGP, the number of global viewers per event increased by almost 24 per cent in the first half of this season compared to the previous third season, reaching 13.6 million viewers. The league's social fan base has grown by 56 per cent, and in November 2023, 1.784 million viewers tuned in to the CBS broadcast of a regatta in Spain, a SailGP record for an American audience. This was the most-watched sailing regatta in the US since 1992, surpassing the Formula 1 race from Brazil, which was watched by 909,000 viewers on ESPN2 that day. That same month, a group of investors led by Marc Lasry, CEO of Avenue Capital Group and former owner of the Milwaukee Bucks in the NBA, bought SailGP's US team in the largest transaction in the league's history.
In addition to the growth in spectators, Coutts sees the commercial model of the series as another reason why the SailGP could become the next Formula 1. "We started out selling teams for between 5 and 10 million dollars. Now you can't buy a team for less than 35 million dollars. We know we have a demand for teams. We can't build boats fast enough. We didn't think we would be in this position before the end of the fifth season."
Better marketing of the SailGP is planned
Coutts also sees great potential in marketing, similar to the Netflix documentary series "Drive to Survive", which presented the personalities, rivalries and some really fast cars of the race track and helped Formula 1 to become much better known in the USA. "We haven't really developed that site yet," said Coutts. "We're doing our own little YouTube video series, which had about 2.1 million views last season. It's a kind of behind-the-scenes documentary series. But now we have real interest from key players to do a full documentary. I think that's how we can take our personalities to the next level."
The event starts next weekend in Sydney, where the German team led by helmsman Erik Heil will once again be taking part.
