Watch Russell Coutts’s 2003 victory in the America’s Cup and the footage is exactly how sailing exists in the popular imagination. Buffeting waves hit two yachts that look like they are moving in slow motion when counterposed with the grey of the ocean they are sailing on.
The high-tech graphics featured on coverage of SailGP, Coutts’s sailing competition founded with Larry Ellison in 2018, could not give a more different experience. Each boat’s speed is identified throughout the race, while distances are overlaid on the water akin to a NFL pitch.
The boats are unrecognisable too. F50 catamarans are used, which look like they almost float above the water. Their hydrofoil designs which raise the boat up are part of what enables greatly increased speeds.
“We set out to redefine people’s perception of what sailing can be,” Coutts says, speaking at the SailGP offices ahead of the British event in Portsmouth next weekend.
He is one of the most successful yachtsmen of all time, but he insists that SailGP is hardly comparable to the competitions he entered during his sailing career.
“There was a gap in the market for an annual series for the best professional sailing athletes in the world.
“Our fans are now far beyond the avid sailing fan. We’re getting racing fans. When you look at graphs between sailing fans and racing fans, they’re identical. They were interested in the same things. You could have superimposed one over the other and you wouldn’t have seen any difference.
“In a way, the fact that we are a sailing property is almost a disadvantage in terms of attracting new fans because they’ve got this picture of it being a little bit dull, a little bit slow, hard to understand, and we’re anything but.
“We are close to shore, fast, action-packed, with a 90-minute broadcast window and four races within that slot.”
SailGP is now into its sixth season. With 13 teams organised by nation, crews compete across 13 races worldwide from the Championship, taking in Auckland, Rio de Janeiro and Abu Dhabi.
Newsletters
Choose the newsletters you want to receive
View more
For information about how The Observer protects your data, read our Privacy Policy
Reflecting on his sporting past, which includes a gold medal from the 1984 Olympics in the Finn class, Coutts says he loves “that form of the sport” but that it isn’t one that can “grow a mass audience”.
“It’s appealing for the avid sailing fan, but it doesn’t go beyond that.”
He says comparing other formats of sailing to SailGP is like “comparing Formula One to a rally car”.
“They’re both good sports properties, but they’re entirely different.”
Coutts believes that the shorter format of SailGP is enticing for the younger fan, repeating the oft-cited idea that “modern viewership habits… are trending more [to] short-form content”. The competition has seen growth in the 18-34 demographic, which newer sporting competitions are desperate to attract as they make inroads against more established properties.
Yet insisting on the difference between SailGP and older formats is not enough. Getting people watching is the key. In the UK, the competition is currently shown on paywalled TNT Sports, although they had a deal with ITV. Their YouTube channel offers a huge package of highlights and reruns, with more than one million subscribers.
“All of our events this year [have seen] considerable growth with ticketing numbers,” says Coutts. “Some of these events have grown 30-40% over the last year. Broadcast audience has gone up too. And every time we add a new market, or a new team, we’re going to see that growth accelerate.”
Part of this growth is also about curating an experience, something that goes far beyond the sport itself. While Sunday’s World Cup final will see half-time extended to make way for Shakira and Justin Bieber, attendees at British SailGP in Portsmouth can expect to see Jess Glynne and Craig David.
“We don’t have the music act as a standalone, but we try to incorporate it. Some of that might be an after-party, but it’s also integrated in the 90-minute show for the fans on site.
“People generally are not just coming to consume the sports event. They’re going to have fun and to be entertained. You’ve got to provide an environment that they are going to have fun, so all those experiences on site, whether it be food and beverage or the merch, have additional entertainment value.”
The aim going forward is to find “consistency of calendar”.
Coutts points to research done within Formula One which shows that fans watch on average six out of 24 races across the season, but the cadence of the season means that fans know when it is on.
“That’s one of the things we’re aspiring to,” he says.
“Even though we’re achieving great ratings in some markets, until we get that consistency of calendar, you don’t create the appointment to view.”
They hope to grow to 20 events a year with 20 teams in order to create a regularity that benefits fans and commercial interests. The markets they want to reach include China and India, as well as Mexico, South Korea and Japan. Coutts brings up Brazil as an example of the impact a local race can have, with viewership going from 600,000 to 1.6 million when they brought a race there.
That in turn fits with a vision of becoming a top-25 sports property by 2030 over the next couple of years, putting them alongside the likes of MotoGP. When they had their first season in 2019, Coutts said the key questions were: “Could we even ticket a sailing event? Could we get people to watch at scale?
“They were all questions that we had, and the answer seems to be yes.”
Photograph by Tom Pilston for The Observer