SailGP CEO Russell Coutts on the business of boating: We've got a bright future
SailGP co-founder and CEO Russell Coutts joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss this weekend's Mubadala New York Sail Grand Prix, the business of boating, growth of SailGP, and more.
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New York Times
an hour ago
- New York Times
When SailGP came to New York City: Spectators, ‘storytelling' and star-studded investors
In New York City, there is never any shortage of sports and entertainment options. This weekend alone, the New York Yankees hosted the Boston Red Sox in front of a sellout crowd and more than 100,000 people attended the Governors Ball music festival. The battle for market share has rarely felt so fierce, yet a short ferry ride over the water to Governors Island and another live sports event was in demand: SailGP. Just under 10,000 people filled out a grandstand — at $85 (£63) per ticket for adults and $43 for kids — to watch a sport growing in appeal and increasingly marketed as the Formula One of the seas. Advertisement The product is increasingly straightforward: 12 nations compete in 12 destinations for $12.8 million worth of prize money across the season. They race in identical hydrofoil catamaran boats, which can go at speeds of over 60 miles per hour. During this weekend's event, racers navigated rainy conditions and choppy waters on the Hudson River, with the skyscrapers of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty painting a picture-perfect backdrop. Spain took their second consecutive event win in the difficult conditions. After finishing the Fleet Races in third with 38 points, Los Gallos held off New Zealand and France to take home the victory in the three-boat final. 'Sailing used to be white triangles on a blue background way out at sea,' says Andy Thompson, SailGP's managing director. 'But that is very far from what SailGP is today. It's a racing property.' The past fortnight has offered further evidence that SailGP is captivating investors. First, the Italian team was acquired by the women-led investment firm Muse Capital at a valuation of $45 million in a consortium that includes the Hollywood actress Anne Hathaway. This represented considerable growth for teams that were selling for between $5m-10m only two years ago. The former Milwaukee Bucks owner Marc Lasry has previously led a group which acquired the U.S. team for $35 million. In March, Real Madrid forward Kylian Mbappe bought into the France SailGP team. If we needed any more evidence that Sail GP is the en-vogue sporting investment, this came last week when Ryan Reynolds added to his growing sporting portfolio by teaming up with Hugh Jackman — yes, that's Deadpool and Wolverine — as the pair became controlling owners of the Australian SailGP team. The Aussies, who have now rebranded as the Bonds Flying Roos — yes, that's Bonds underwear as the title sponsor — won the first three Sail GP championships and were runners-up last season. Advertisement Their star sailor Tom Slingsby, an Olympic gold medallist and CEO of the Aussie SailGP team, says he became aware of visits to SailGP events by Reynolds' team at Maximum Effort, the production company and marketing agency founded by the actor ('maximum effort' being the catchphrase of Reynolds' movie Deadpool). Tentative discussions have already started about a possible docuseries, following on from Reynolds' investment in Welsh soccer club Wrexham and Colombian soccer team La Equidad. 'They bring star power,' Slingsby tells The Athletic. 'To have Deadpool and Wolverine, they're the 'it' people right now. They also bring an element of storytelling. We're seeing what Ryan's done with Wrexham. They're just going to be fun owners. Having chatted with Ryan, he is incredibly funny and he's going to fit really well with our team. 'Importantly, every discussion with them is, 'What do you guys need to do to be successful?'. Obviously there's talk of ways to promote our team in the league, but it all comes second to us being successful on the water. I was obviously pretty strong on us being athletes first, and if we can be entertaining for the public as well, that's great, but we want to win on the water.' The U.S. team's ownership group is similarly stacked with big-time investors and star names. Mike Buckley, the CEO and on-boat strategist for the U.S. team, says: 'We wanted the most diverse ownership group that we could possibly find. We want people who don't think like us and have different areas of expertise. 'I can pick up the phone and call Marc Lasry, who runs one of the most successful private equity firms in the world (Avenue Capital). He won the NBA championship and took the Bucks from the back to the front and the valuation from a few hundred million to three or four billion.' The U.S. ownership also features founding Uber engineer Ryan Mckillen and his wife Margaret, the Resy co-founder Gary Vaynerchuk, Hollywood actress Issa Rae, the NFL's DeAndre Hopkins and boxer Deontay Wilder. For sailors, SailGP provides game-changing security by providing year-round events beyond the America's Cup and Olympic Games. Advertisement 'Sailing used to jump on the radar every four years and then it just disappeared off the mainstream public's vision,' says Slingsby. 'After an Olympics, when you finish your event, you'd just be sitting there and there's no funding, you're out of a job for a while and you're waiting for the phone to ring. 'When I've been between Olympics, I've had other jobs — bartending and boat building, all sorts of things. You're doing anything you can to keep the money coming in. 'In 10 years, we'll definitely be seeing SailGP still here and racing in consistent events. It's going to be the backbone of sailing. It's five years old now, a lot of people were saying that it would be around for a year or two and disappear.' Founded by the billionaire Larry Ellison, the co-founder of tech firm Oracle, SailGP is discovering traction in what their executives describe as the crossover market between lifestyle and experiential sports. Slingsby notes there are markets such as New Zealand where the fandom is more intense, and athletes are approached at hotels and when out for dinner. SailGP's executive Thompson says the event's ratings 'regularly average around 20 million dedicated viewers around the world.' In the U.S., CBS and its Paramount+ streaming platform broadcast the event. Their highest-rated events — which bring in around 1.8 million viewers — have been intentionally scheduled to follow NFL games in order to capture audiences from America's most popular sport. SailGP's chief revenue officer Ben Johnson bristles at any suggestion sailing is a 'niche' sport, but the locations of some races — St. Tropez in France, Abu Dhabi and Dubai in the Middle East, or Manhattan — do lend themselves to an exclusive in-person audience. The aim is a vast broadcast audience and a hot-ticket live event. Johnson says they are taking learnings from events such as the Kentucky Derby, or the Indy 500, as well as F1, and 'leagues who are moving from traditional sports operators to more sports entertainment and even just broadly entertainment properties.' By attracting celebrity investors (or employing DJ Khaled as the league's 'Chief Hype Officer'), SailGP want to make their events, much like F1, a place to see and be seen. Advertisement Johnson says: 'It is very intentional. There are brands like (European soccer champions) Paris Saint-Germain, where they are more of a lifestyle brand than they are a traditional sports team. They are a perfect example of where we see the opportunity in the global sports space. 'We don't need to be a season-ticketed event. We don't need local media rights to validate our audience growth or our revenue model. We think the demand right now from an experiential standpoint is the highest it's ever been and will continue to grow. So we're focused on new fanbases and inspiring the next generation of lifestyle sports fans. 'People (are) looking for social, communal, family-friendly, brand safe moments where they can bring people together. And I think we're the perfect backdrop for that. It's new, it's novel, fast, you know, all the things that you need to really capture people's attention.' Sponsors are certainly discovering the appeal. SailGP's title sponsor is Rolex, but across the league and teams there are now investments or partnerships from sovereign wealth funds, such as Mubadala Capital (of Abu Dhabi), as well as Emirates airline sponsoring the league and Red Bull partnering with the Italian team, while the U.S. team have sponsorships with Tommy Hilfiger, Amazon, and T-Mobile. The British team is title-sponsored by Emirates and has a partnership with JP Morgan, while Deutsche Bank sponsors the German side. 'I would expect next year you (will) see all the teams somewhere close to commercial profitability,' says Buckley. When asked about profitability, Johnson said SailGP does not disclose its financials, but it is 'ahead of our own internal targets.' The growing investment in the sport is also accompanied by increased jeopardy. Only Spain have won more than one event this season, which may be one of the advantages of sailors racing on identical boats — meaning winning and losing come down to conditions on the day and the performances and skill of those on board. That is not to say there have not been challenges. May's SailGP event was supposed to be held in Rio de Janeiro for the first time but it was cancelled after a defect was found in some of the fleet's wingsails. Australia's wingsail collapsed in San Francisco in a moment Slingsby called a 'scary situation.' The 12 boats were all back on the start line in New York. With 12 teams and money swishing around the sport, talk invariably turns to expansion. Russell Coutts, SailGP CEO and an Olympic gold medallist with New Zealand, has previously spoken about expanding the number of events per season to as high as 20 or 24. Plenty of nations remain untapped, notably Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which has poured money into sports elsewhere. Advertisement 'I think the demand right now exceeds 12 teams,' Johnson says. 'We have an opportunity for us to announce expansion teams, continue to look at markets that we think are really additive.' Buckley says 'balance' is key, concluding: 'There are plenty of countries out there that aren't represented currently in the league. It would be great for all of us.'
New York Times
9 hours ago
- New York Times
Spain wins New York Sail Grand Prix, becomes first repeat winner of SailGP season
NEW YORK — After a shaky start to its SailGP season, a Spanish victory at the New York Sail Grand Prix on Sunday shows that Diego Botín's team is fully back on track. Botín's group won the last event in San Francisco back in March, making them the first repeat winners of 2025 after there were five different winners in the first five events. Advertisement While the cheer from the crowd on Governor's Island was certainly loud for the jubilant Spanish, it had been just as big for the winners of the opening race of Sunday's session, when Brazil crossed the finish in first place. As the first and currently only female driver in SailGP, two-time Olympic gold medalist Martine Grael made history as she steered her hydrofoiling F50 to the race win. Nor was that moment of Brazilian brilliance a flash in the pan. After three soggy races in light winds on Saturday, three more fleet races for the 12-boat competition offered plenty of opportunity for moving up or down the leaderboard. The weather conditions were a vast improvement on Sunday, with sunshine and improved breezes making for consistent foiling around the course. Not that the New York race is ever straightforward, with strong currents and the close proximity of the imposing Manhattan skyline always influencing the wildly dancing wind direction. After winning the first race of the afternoon, Brazil followed up with a solid fourth. This put Grael on the verge of the three-boat final, which would have been another first for a female driver. Meanwhile, Quentin Delapierre and the French team had been quietly chipping away with some decent, if unspectacular, scores across the weekend. This time, the French seized the initiative at the start and won the race, giving them a strong points edge and a smooth path into the final three. NO WORDS 🤩 🤩 🤩 — SailGP (@SailGP) June 8, 2025 The fight for the other two places was a three-way battle between New Zealand, Brazil and Spain. Pete Burling executed a good start and took the Kiwis into the final with a fourth-place finish. Australia won the race, making Tom Slingsby's team the only crew to win two heats across this weekend. Unfortunately, it wasn't enough for the Aussies. Advertisement 'Yeah, two wins, and two last places in some other races, so they cancel each other out,' he told The Athletic disconsolately, scratching his head as to why his usually reliable team had fallen off its game in New York and slumped to fifth place. It was a weekend to forget for some of the other leading lights from earlier in the season, with Canada and Great Britain finishing tied on points and ending up seventh and eighth, respectively. Having raced so cleanly throughout the weekend, Spain got itself into trouble in the early stages of the sixth fleet race, starting poorly and compounding its woes with a penalty after fouling Brazil on the first lap. Botín was on the ropes. But he split away from Grael on the final upwind leg to hook into stronger wind on the Brooklyn side of the course, surging past Brazil to seize the third spot into the final. Botín admitted to The Athletic that the close tussle with Brazil was exactly the shot of adrenaline his team needed to get in the right mindset for the three-boat showdown against France and New Zealand. 'For that final race, you just go all in, you go for the win,' he said. 'We started the day really well, and we thought maybe we were in the final a bit too easy, which put us into a defensive mode, which was not helping at all. Then in the second race, we hit something hard under the water, maybe a tree or something, so that made us lose a lot of places. And in that last race, we didn't have a good start and we had to fight back quite hard. That also gave us a push to just fight as hard as we could and it got us a good momentum for the final.' In the final, Spain dominated the approach to the start, launching into an early lead ahead of New Zealand. France misjudged its run-in to the line and was never a threat for the win. When the Kiwis momentarily fell off their foils at the bottom of the course near the Statue of Liberty, Spain's lead became unassailable. Botín's crew started the celebrations well before it crossed the finish line in front of the New York crowd. Advertisement 'Two wins in a row is super hard in SailGP,' grinned Botín, 'so we are super grateful for having done this. Six events done and six events still to go, so everything is to play for this season.' SailGP resumes in mid-July at Portsmouth in southern England. This is the first of five events in Europe before the grand final in Abu Dhabi at the end of November. (Photo of Spain celebrating in New York: Ricardo Pinto / SailGP)
Yahoo
10 hours ago
- Yahoo
Spain triumph in New York for consecutive SailGP wins
Reigning champions Spain have put in a battling performance on the second day of the sixth round of SailGP, beating New Zealand and France in the final race in New York to clinch consecutive wins as the season reached the halfway point. Coming off their season's first victory in San Francisco in March, Diego Botin's team went five points clear into day two and overcame a slump in race five to make the top three. With shifting winds in the shadows of the Statue of Liberty on Sunday, Spain took control of the showdown on the Hudson River with an impeccable start, arriving three seconds ahead of New Zealand at gate two and three, and held their lead to clinch the victory. VAMOSSS! 🇪🇸🔥👏The #NewYorkSGP final delivered a fantastic strategic battle with @SailGPESP taking the win! 👑 #SailGP — SailGP (@SailGP) June 8, 2025 Peter Burling's New Zealand, winners in New York last year, lost more distance in the final stages and reached the finish line 43 seconds behind the Spaniards. The win saw Spain move up two places in the championship table on 46 points as they moved above three-times champions Australia, who finished fifth in New York, by one point. "America is a special place for us and it's amazing to win again here," Spanish driver Botin said. But it was not all smooth sailing for Spain on the event's final day. They started off well with a second-placed finish in the day's opening race four, 16 seconds behind Brazil, who won their first-ever fleet race at SailGP since joining the league at the beginning of the season. The Brazilians, who sat fifth after day one, were hopeful of a top-three finish, and were well positioned for just that when they finished fourth in the next race. A tricky race five, meanwhile, did a lot of damage to Spain, who were 11th and dropped from top spot to fourth in the event standings. Botin's crew earned a penalty in the decisive race six but made massive gains and got ahead of Brazil on the second-to-last leg to secure a spot in the event final. Australia held onto their early lead to win the sixth race, grabbing their second victory of the event after they came out on top in the second race on Saturday. France, who sailed very consistently on both days, put in a flawless performance to pick up a win in race five. The season next moves to Europe, first returning to Britain as the fleet races in Portsmouth from July 19-20 before heading to Germany in August for the very first time.
