As SailGP’s popularity grows, valuations are increasing seemingly as fast as the foiling catamarans zip across the waves.
New sponsors and investors are stepping up. Rolex jumped from Formula One to become SailGP’s title sponsor. Soccer star Kylian Mbappé has bought what’s described as a significant stake in the French team.
A handful of other ownership deals are in the works, and word on the docks is that Jimmy Spithill is close to finalizing an ownership group for Red Bull Italy, which debuted this season.
As SailGP becomes the premier event on the yachting calendar, its teams are building for the long haul, as opposed to the America’s Cup, where big-name syndicates come and go.
The perks are pretty good, too.
Take NorthStar Canada owner Dr. Greg Bailey. His team isn’t one of the profitable ones, yet, but if skipper Giles Scott keeps the team near the top of the season standings, that could be changing.
Bailey, a biotech entrepreneur, took in last weekend’s Los Angeles Sail Grand Prix, where he worked the upscale Adrenaline Lounge for potential sponsors/investors and then watched as Scott steered the Canadian F50 catamaran to victory over Peter Burling’s Black Foils and Tom Slingsby’s Flying Roo Aussie crew in the podium race.
Bailey saved the Canadian team from disappearing when he bought it from the league last fall, mostly as an investment but also for national pride. The sale was announced in conjunction with sailing’s first transfer deal, which moved Scott from Sir Ben Ainslie’s Emirates Great Britain to Canada.
While some owners get into SailGP for the love of the sport or as an investment, Bailey isn’t shy about saying he wants to leverage his SailGP ownership to raise money for his biotech companies, including Juvenescence, whose name adorns the catamaran’s hulls. NorthStar Canada recently signed its first sponsor, FlyHouse.
Bailey said his leverage comes through meeting people.
“The demographic that follows sailing is a little bit upstream. This isn’t going to come as a shock to you but rich people want to live longer,” Bailey said. “I have a company that’s creating drugs that we just finished two human trials on drugs that were right. I give you 10 extra healthy years of living. I’m going to be groveling for dollars in the lounge next door.”
Scott (above), a two-time Olympic gold medalist, applauded Bailey’s commitment.
“If you’re going to become a serious team, it’s critical,” Scott said. “The Canadian team last season, where they suffered is they were very much turning up to SailGP events and they were just contracted for short periods and really they’d jump on a plane and start thinking about SailGP.
“The way that the league’s gone, and the sailors it’s attracting, it’s becoming so, so professional. You’ve got to take it seriously. It’s got to become almost all-encompassing. You can’t do that without good backing, good management, good ownership, good funding. It’s the basic framework of any successful team and we’re very lucky to have Greg, for sure.”
After consecutive podium finishes, NorthStar Canada is fifth in the season standings.
SailGP started with six teams and five regattas. It now has 12 teams and 13 regattas around the world that are contested in a TV-friendly format.
SailGP managing director Andy Thompson said Britain, the United States, Switzerland, Germany, Canada, France and Brazil are fully private. Italy will be the next team to become fully privately funded, followed by Spain and Australia. ROCKWOOL Denmark is sponsor-operated and New Zealand remains the only team fully owned by the league, Thompson added.
Thompson said Britain, France and Mubadala Brazil, another newcomer, are profitable.
“It’s a great proof of concept for owners coming into the league that they can start to be cash-flow positive straight away, which is pretty unheard of in the sport of sailing,” Thompson said. “Over the years it has been firmly in the opposite direction.”
Bailey said a true inflection point will come when SailGP commands significant media rights, which will increase the value of sponsorships and of teams.
“It’s such a compelling sport to watch,” Bailey said. “I think it’s way more interesting than Formula One, where basically if you’re in the pole position you win the race like 80 percent of the time. Here it’s all over the map because the wind can change, and you can go from first to last.”
In the early days of SailGP, owners could get in for $15 million or $20 million. Now the going price is believed to be at least $50 million, perhaps much more.
MIke Buckley declined to say what he and co-owner Ryan McKillen, a founding Uber engineer, paid for the U.S. team in November 2023. But he said he believes the team is worth much more than $100 million. Their large investor group includes Hollywood celebrities, American sports stars and a private equity group.
“We think we got in at a really good time compared to what these teams are going for now in markets that are a fraction of the U.S.,” Buckley said. “What was really exciting for us is very quickly after we purchased the U.S. team, small-market teams sold for significantly more than we paid for our team. That’s a great thing for the growth, and that’s a credit to Larry and Russell who are driving this thing forward.”
French skipper Quentin Delapierre said Mbappé’s investment “is huge. We couldn’t dream something better. Having Mbappé on our side, with his athlete vision, but also as an investor, is super strong for the team and I think the future will be way better with him.”
Thompson said there’s a group of owners who have seen the value of their teams increase significantly over the last three years. “I’d expect that to continue for a long period. They're definitely seeing that anything they’ve invested is starting to be returned.”
Spithill retired as a SailGP skipper and started Red Bull Italy, which debuted this season with Olympic medallist Ruggero Tita as skipper. Spithill said he couldn’t comment on the team’s future ownership structure but is excited about SailGP’s long-term outlook.
Spithill recalled having an Australia II lunch box for carrying his vegemite sandwiches to school, and then suddenly that syndicate, which won the America’s Cup in 1983, was gone.
Stars & Stripes disappeared when Dennis Conner retired. Oracle Team USA, led by Ellison and Coutts, and skippered by Spithill, disappeared after it lost the Auld Mug in 2017, although Ellison and Coutts then started SailGP.
“It always kind of made me wonder, ‘That just seems crazy,’ ” said Spithill, a two-time America’s Cup winner. “But the biggest thing missing from the sport was having a regular season and something that was run professionally on TV. Now we’ve got it.”
