SailGP expansion: Cost of buying new team expected to exceed $60m
As the global sailing championship plans to expand from 12 teams to 14 next season, the cost it will take to buy a team outright is expected to exceed $60 million — $55m more than it would have cost to buy a franchise when the competition started six years ago.
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The tender process for the expansion, which began in July and is being structured by Deloitte, closes on August 14.
SailGP's managing director Andrew Thompson revealed that there had been 'over 35 expressions of interest' with strong interest in Europe and added he was expecting 'multiple competitive bids.' Last month, Thompson had told The Athletic there had been about 15 bids.
'Sovereign wealth funds, private equity firms, high net-worth individuals have all shown interest,' he told The Athletic's Asli Pelit.
'In terms of geographies that the bids are coming from, I can't give too much away at this point but there's definitely a strong interest in Europe in some of the remaining nations that aren't in SailGP today.'
Argentina, Mexico and Sweden have been touted as two potential newcomers for the 13th and 14th teams, while China and Saudi Arabia are also yet to have a team.
Speaking ahead of this weekend's German Grand Prix in Sassnitz, Thompson said the championships would 'love to expand' further into the Middle East. This season's opening grand prix, and the campaign's finale in November, takes place in the United Arab Emirates but there is no team from the region currently competing in the championship.
'We've seen plenty of interest in Asia as well, and that's definitely somewhere that we'd like to be in the future, as well as Latin America,' Thompson said. 'It's really proven to be a truly global process.'
SailGP is a close-to-shore sailing championship that has national teams competing against each other in identical foiling F50 catamarans. The number of teams competing has doubled since the first season in 2019, while the last two seasons in particular have seen an increased interest in the sport.
Investment by high-profile sports stars and actors has helped raise awareness. Hollywood actors Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman became co-owners of the Australian team in June, while France's World Cup-winning striker Kylian Mbappe has purchased a stake in the French team.
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June's New York Grand Prix was the most attended SailGP event in America with more than 10,000 ticketed spectators attending, the organisers said.
Such growth has resulted in a significant increase in the value of the teams. In an interview with The Athletic earlier this year, co-founder Russell Coutts said $5m would have been a 'good price' for a team 'in the early days of SailGP.'
Of the bids for the latest round of expansion, Thompson said: 'The floor in this round is $60m. That's just to buy the team outright. We expect bids in excess of that, possibly in excess of $70m. That would be the range that we're expecting.'
Under the current format, all 12 teams compete against each other in each race during a weekend with a winner-takes-all finale on a Sunday between the top-three performing teams. Thompson conceded a playoff format could be introduced given that he felt 12 was the maximum number of teams that could line up together on a start line.
'We're looking at new ways to present our racing format,' he said, adding that it would likely be a 20-team championship in five years' time.
'We haven't finalized that format yet, but it's actually exciting for us to bring fresh new ideas to SailGP. We want to make sure we have the ethos that we keep the racing understandable to an audience that might not understand sailing.'
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