When SailGP came to New York City: Spectators, ‘storytelling' and star-studded investors

New York Times

a day ago

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.
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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.
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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.
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'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.
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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.
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'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.'