There was a time – and it wasn’t all that long ago – when the big-ticket events in our sport were run primarily for sailors. The America’s Cup, the Olympics, even offshore classics like the Whitbread, were essentially competitions staged by sailors, for sailors, and watched only by those already immersed in the sport.
But the landscape has shifted. Today, sailing’s four biggest stages – the America’s Cup, Olympic sailing, SailGP, and the Vendée Globe – are as much entertainment products as they are sporting contests. They are packaged, broadcast, clipped, and streamed in ways that look far more like mainstream sport than niche yacht racing.
The question is: is this a good thing? And perhaps more importantly, does it even matter to the millions of sailors who spend their weekends battling it out in dinghies, sportsboats, or keelboats?
Let’s start with SailGP – because if ever there was a sailing series born for television, this is it. The whole concept was designed with the sports entertainment model front and centre: short, sharp fleet races in identical foiling catamarans; city-centre venues where spectators can line the waterfront; a slick broadcast package with data overlays and expert commentary.
SailGP aims –with varying degrees of success – to replicate the atmosphere and high-adrenaline action of a Formula 1 weekend, but on water. You could argue that without this kind of mainstream presentation, sailing doesn’t stand a chance of cutting through in today’s ultra-competitive sports and entertainment marketplace. Whatever you might think of it, SailGP has created a genuinely watchable product that attracts eyeballs far beyond our small sailing bubble.
The America’s Cup has been on a similar journey – albeit a much longer one. Once the preserve of a few yacht clubs and their billionaire backers, in recent decades the Cup has become a media extravaganza. The switch to foiling multihulls in San Francisco in 2013 was the tipping point, and since then the Cup has doubled down on spectacle: faster boats, tighter courses, better graphics, and wall-to-wall coverage.
Purists might lament the loss of stately monohulls duelling off Newport or Fremantle. But if the Cup had stayed that way, would anyone outside the sport still be watching? Actually, who knows? Maybe they would? But what a crying shame it would have been for an event that has always been about creating the fastest possible boat to have ignored the foiling revolution. The fact is, the America’s Cup has grown into a headline act in the wider sporting calendar – and that visibility is no bad thing.
Then there’s Olympic sailing. Always the most complex discipline in the Games, it has struggled to translate its subtleties into a TV-friendly format. Some would argue that having so many classes is one reason for that – and for the extremely high TV production costs required to cover sailing at the Olympics.
The medal race innovation introduced in 2008 helped, but the International Olympic Committee still pushes for more “entertainment value”. That’s why we’ve seen foiling boards, kites, and mixed-gender classes added to the programme.
The Olympic regatta has to justify its place against beach volleyball and BMX freestyle – and that means adopting formats and equipment that deliver spectacle as well as sporting credibility. Amongst them is the proposed new medal race format that is proving highly unpopular with the Olympic campaigners.
Many, it seems, have adopted a 'who cares?' approach to the looming possibility that sailing might eventually be excluded from the Olympic roster. But that is to recklessly discount the knock-on effects that would have on the wider sport.
The first casualty would probably be World Sailing, whose funding comes very largely from the IOC each Olympic quadrennial and would be very unlikely to survive without it. Some cynics, of course, will say 'good riddance' but we all should remember that sailing's international governing body does a lot more than any of us perceive. As the old song goes: "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone".
And then we come to the Vendée Globe. Of all sailing’s crown jewels, this one is perhaps the least contrived in its entertainment value – and arguably the most compelling. The concept is simple enough: one sailor, one boat, non-stop, around the world. But the drama that spills out of this race every four years transcends sailing. Heroism, tragedy, triumph, despair – the Vendée has it all, and it is played out over months, not minutes.
What started as a fringe test of human endurance has become a national obsession in France and a global media story. Hundreds of thousands turn up in Les Sables-d’Olonne just to watch the start. Millions more follow the tracker. For a sport often accused of being incomprehensible to outsiders, the Vendée Globe proves that raw human narrative – one person versus the planet – needs no translation.
So here’s the big question: do these global spectacles actually make any difference to the rest of us? To the Optimist parent juggling trolleys and thermos flasks? To the sportsboat crews trailering their boats to a blustery regional regatta? To the keelboat crews racing around the cans or in local passage races?
On the face of it, the answer is no. Most of us will still show up on the water each weekend and try to work out the line bias before the start gun. Grassroots participation in sailing is largely insulated from what happens at the elite end.
And yet, to dismiss the top tier as irrelevant would be short-sighted. High-profile sailing events create visibility, storylines, and heroes that keep the sport in the public eye.
A 10-year-old who watches SailGP on YouTube may well be inspired to join the local junior programme. A club racer who follows the Vendée Globe might suddenly find their non-sailing colleagues asking questions about routing strategies. Even the perennial debates about whether the Cup has “lost its soul” keep sailing in the headlines and on people's social media streams.
The ripple effect of sailing's major events helps sustain the broader ecosystem. They bring attention, investment, and fresh energy into the sport – and that filters down eventually, even if in indirect ways.
Look around the grassroots and you see a mixed picture. On one hand, classes like the Optimist, OK Dinghy, and Finn are thriving – still able to attract 200-plus boats to their major championships. That is a remarkable demonstration of health and appetite within amateur sailing. Take also the Rolex Fastnet and Sydney to Hobart races which are increasingly oversubscribed affairs attracting massive fleets of mostly amateur sailors.
On the other hand, some of our most historic keelboat regattas are struggling. Cowes Week, once the beating heart of British sailing, has seen steadily declining fleet numbers. Rising costs, shrinking free time, and competing lifestyle choices all play a part.
So while the top end of the sport is being re-engineered to appeal to sports fans and broadcasters, the grassroots is dealing with its own challenges – but also proving its resilience.
Here’s the thing: rather than fretting over whether SailGP is too commercial, whether the Cup is too extreme, whether Olympic sailing is bending too far towards entertainment, or whether the Vendée Globe has become a media juggernaut, perhaps we should step back and see the bigger picture.
Our sport has not one but four major global platforms – each capable of drawing mainstream attention. That’s rare. How many other niche sports can claim that? Cycling has the Tour de France, tennis has Wimbledon, athletics has the Olympics – but sailing has four tent-pole properties, each with its own identity and audience.
And crucially, these high-profile events don’t exist in a vacuum. They are underpinned by the vast, diverse, global community of sailors who keep the sport alive week in, week out. From kids having fun in their Optis to the grown-ups racing dinghies or keelboats on Wednesday evenings and weekends, it’s this foundation that makes the professional showpieces meaningful.
So yes, the America’s Cup, SailGP, Olympic sailing, and the Vendée Globe are now entertainment products. They are increasingly tailored television, for sponsors, and for mainstream audiences. And that’s not a betrayal of the sport – it’s an opportunity. It gives sailing visibility. It brings in new people from outside the sport that might just become participants one day. It reminds the world that what we do on the water can be exciting, demanding, and worth watching.
Meanwhile, the rest of us can still go sailing for the same reasons we always have: competition, camaraderie, challenge, and fun. The sport’s heart beats just as strongly at an Optimist worlds, a Finn Masters, an OK Europeans, or a club handicap race, as it does in the America's Cup, SailGP, Vendée Globe, or an Olympic medal race.
The fact that we now have both ends of the spectrum – mass-participation at the grassroots level and world-class entertainment at the top – should surely not be something to carp about – but rather to celebrate.
