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SailGP Touts Global Teams and a $1 Million Prize for Oceangoing Races

When you have a ton of disposable cash and lust for yacht racing like Oracle DEO Larry Ellison, it appears the next step is to form your own version of Grand Prix racing for the fastest ocean-going vehicle.
SailGP 7 photos
Photo: SailGP
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Ellison and his yacht-racing mentor, Sir Russell Coutts, thought that sailing had gotten dull.

“One TV producer described racing sailboats as slow white triangles on a blue background that’s impossible to understand. Larry knew if we couldn’t make it understandable for television, it would never succeed,” says Coutts.

Coutts is an Olympic gold medalist, a five-time America’s Cup winner, and the CEO of the Oracle America’s Cup efforts.

Coutts and Ellison redesigned the sport to fit their vision with that as their challenge and came up with SailGP. The pair says it’s an action-packed extreme sport - essentially the sailing equivalent of Formula 1 auto racing.

Now the second season, SailGP sees eight national teams competing at events held around the globe in their 50-foot long, high-speed F50 foiling catamarans.

When the series ends on March 27, 2022 in the waters off San Francisco, the winners will take home a $1 million prize.

Endeavor, a media and sports firm that owns talent agency IMG, signed on as a minority investor. The investment seems well-considered at this stage as television ratings for the broadcasts are drawing more than 170 million viewers. In fact, the season-opening event held off Bermuda drew an audience of 4.9 million. As a comparison, that amounts to about half that watching the 2020 World Series during each game.

Ellison has pledged to fund the league for its first five years, and he says he says that the long game is to sign up 10 independent franchises - at a price of $20 million each.

“We looked at the world’s biggest leagues and took the best parts,” Coutts says. “We made the final race winner-takes-all, since NBA statistics show many viewers only watch the last quarter.”

The F50 boats used in the competition are based on the 2017 America’s Cup racing catamarans but capable of higher speeds as a ship captained by Ben Ainslie reached a record 61.1 mph.

“They can sail four times faster than the wind. There’s an element of danger we’re not trying to disguise,” Coutts says.
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