This summer season, Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman grew to become co-owners of Australia’s three-time champion SailGP crew. Days earlier, Anne Hathaway joined a female-led consortium buying Italy’s crew for round $45 million. Kylian Mbappé has purchased into France’s squad, whereas Sebastian Vettel, Deontay Wilder, and DeAndre Hopkins have every acquired stakes in groups.
So, what’s drawing A-list celebrities away from conventional sports activities properties and towards a crusing league that’s solely been round for six years?
The reply lies in how SailGP has cracked a code that eluded the game for hundreds of years. What Russell Coutts, the league’s CEO and cofounder, described as as soon as being “white triangles on a blue background racing far-off from shore” now seems extra like Formulation 1 on water.
Flying boats, document speeds
Overlook the whole lot you suppose you realize about sailboats. SailGP’s F50 catamarans fly above the water on hydrofoils—underwater wings that elevate the hulls fully out of the water—at speeds exceeding 100 kilometers per hour.
That’s 62 mph. On water. Powered solely by wind.
Most powerboats can’t even sustain.
The boats don’t use conventional sails. As an alternative, the 50-foot boats have inflexible wings constructed like airplane wings turned vertical, standing as much as 80 ft tall. “This produces what we, in engineering phrases, name a elevate coefficient that’s thrice larger than a skinny membrane sail,” Coutts explains.
Translation: They catch wind extra effectively than typical sails, producing large thrust even in mild situations.
When a ship strikes ahead, it creates its personal wind—identical to how your hand feels resistance once you stick it out a automobile window. By angling these high-efficiency wings appropriately, F50s use each the precise wind and the wind they create by their very own velocity to go greater than thrice sooner than the wind itself.
9-minute races and $80 tickets
Conventional crusing races stretched for hours with boats barely seen from shore. SailGP races final 9 to 12 minutes and have 4 races per day: brief, intense bursts with sufficient time between heats for a loo break and a cocktail.
The shorter race format allows one thing conventional crusing by no means might: close-to-shore competitors in iconic harbors. Occasions occur in locations like Sydney Harbor, New York Harbor, and San Francisco Bay. Stadium seating sells out weeks upfront. Auckland and Portsmouth every drew 25,000 ticketed followers.
Tickets begin at $80 for waterfront grandstand seats—accessible pricing that brings the game to a far broader viewers than the yacht membership exclusivity of conventional crusing. Followers can watch from grandstands or hire a ship and watch from the water. It’s half race, half waterfront competition.
The spectacle interprets to screens, too. Augmented actuality graphics superimposed on the water create a visual enjoying discipline with boundaries, just like the yard markers on a soccer discipline. Earlier than this, even devoted crusing followers struggled to comply with races on TV. Now, even probably the most informal fan can perceive who’s profitable and why.
Since launching in 2019, viewership has reached 200 million per season throughout 212 territories globally. CBS attracted 1.78 million viewers for its Spain Sail Grand Prix broadcast—the most important viewers for a crusing occasion within the U.S. in 30 years—exceeding what some regular-season NHL video games pull. Extra lately, on November 23, CBS’s broadcast of The Race to Abu Dhabi drew 3.47 million viewers, breaking the earlier U.S. viewership document for a crusing occasion established by the 1992 America’s Cup on ABC.
“We have been pleasantly stunned to seek out that the enchantment to the racing fan was equivalent to the enchantment to the avid crusing fan,” Coutts recollects. “We’ve acquired confidence now that the product stands up.”
From cash pit to cash maker
In 2019, Coutts and Oracle cofounder Larry Ellison launched SailGP with one deceptively easy innovation: a daily season.
For many years, skilled crusing meant rich lovers funding costly hobbies with no return. The America’s Cup—crusing’s premier occasion for 174 years—exemplified the damaged mannequin.
Think about if the Tremendous Bowl occurred as soon as each 4 years with no common season in between. No predictable schedule. No manner for athletes to plan or construct a profession. That’s been the America’s Cup. Sponsors couldn’t justify the funding. Broadcasters couldn’t construct programming round it. Groups couldn’t make it worthwhile.
“It sounds so easy, doesn’t it?” says Jimmy Spithill, CEO and co-owner of the Purple Bull Italy SailGP Crew. “However whether or not you’re an athlete, a sponsor, or a broadcaster—if it wasn’t a daily season, how might you propose?”
Upon founding, Ellison dedicated to funding the league for 5 years. However the transformation occurred sooner than anybody anticipated. Groups that couldn’t be bought in 2019 now command $60 to $70 million valuations. 4 of the league’s 12 groups are already worthwhile—a milestone that took the WNBA 13 years to realize and that Wrexham, Reynolds’ soccer crew, still hasn’t reached.
In conventional crusing, groups burned tens of millions on secret boat improvement that by no means stopped. That recreation is over. The enterprise mannequin prevents this cash pit downside. All groups race equivalent boats. All efficiency information is totally shared—boat telemetry, race methods, even engineering insights. When the league develops an improve—new hydrofoils, higher management programs—each crew will get it concurrently. There isn’t any shopping for wins.
“Everybody’s on the identical gear,” Spithill says. “So nobody has a technical benefit.”
The funding thesis that bought Hollywood
When Gian Luca Passi de Preposulo evaluated investing within the Purple Bull Italy crew, he noticed one thing greater than crusing. The Italian luxurious model govt who spent years at Giorgio Armani and Moncler acknowledged a well-recognized sample.
“I noticed a rising sport with an unimaginable heritage due to the America’s Cup,” he says. “Hundreds of thousands of followers following this by generations, however no competitors on a weekly or month-to-month base.”
Passi de Preposulo acknowledged the sample: a legacy sport with tens of millions of followers however no constant competitors to comply with—precisely the hole SailGP’s common season format stuffed.
However he additionally noticed that the enterprise mannequin affords funding benefits not possible in additional mature leagues. Nationwide crew shortage—one per nation, capped at round 20 groups whole—creates inherent worth. Shopping for a $60 million SailGP crew provides you a considerably bigger possession stake and extra governance rights than placing that very same cash right into a $5 billion NFL franchise. Women and men race collectively on the identical boats—uncommon in skilled sports activities—doubling the audience and interesting to the growing pool of traders backing ladies’s sports activities.
Groups function on customary sports activities economics: sponsorship, broadcast income shares, and licensing. However solely six years in, most income streams stay undeveloped. The 4 worthwhile groups achieved this by sponsorship alone. Money cows like broadcast rights and licensing characterize pure upside. Crew valuations mirror this trajectory.
“In season three, you might have purchased a crew for $20 million,” Coutts says. “Now you’re not going to purchase a crew for beneath $70.”
Scaling SailGP
From six groups and 5 occasions in 2019, SailGP now runs 12 groups throughout 12 occasions. The goal: 20-plus occasions yearly, matching Formulation 1’s 24. Groups 13 and 14 are already bought for the 2026 and 2027 seasons, and the league initiatives over $200 million in annual income by season’s finish, which culminates this weekend with the Grand Remaining in Abu Dhabi, the place the highest three groups will compete for a $2 million prize.
Rolex signed a 10-year title sponsorship, renaming the competitors the Rolex SailGP Championship. “It’s by far the largest partnership in crusing,” Coutts says. Amazon, Tommy Hilfiger, and T-Cellular have additionally joined as crew sponsors.
Occasions now generate a mean $26.2 million in financial impression for host cities—quadruple the $6.8 million from Season 1, based on SailGP. For context, Formulation 1 races generate $200 to $400 million.
The movie star funding impression is measurable. Market analysis agency YouGov tracks “buzz scores”—a measure of whether or not individuals are listening to optimistic or unfavorable issues a couple of model. In Australia, SailGP scores jumped from 22.0 to 26.3 in two weeks following the Reynolds and Jackman announcement. France noticed related lifts after Mbappé’s funding.
For Reynolds, SailGP represents one other portfolio growth. His Most Effort Investments backs Wrexham AFC, Membership Necaxa, La Equidad, and Alpine F1. His Wrexham success—transforming an obscure Welsh soccer membership by marketing genius and storytelling—affords a template as SailGP seems to proceed its development, each in funding and world viewers.
“The truth that we are able to get that form of [celebrity] involvement in one of many groups is superb,” Coutts says. “And so they’ll have some enjoyable with it too, which is what it’s all about.”
