SailGP: How series got on its foils, and away from Ellison’s wallet
Ahead of its first season in 2019, the American billionaire Larry Ellison agreed to fund a new racing league on water called SailGP for five years. At the conclusion of its fifth season last year, when British entry Emirates GBR picked up a first title, that funding agreement came to an end.
But the league has not been sold to a fellow billionaire, nor has it fallen by the wayside like 50 per cent of start-ups do. Instead, SailGP banked $200m in revenue over 2025 and Oracle co-founder Ellison — with former sailor Russell Coutts — can now afford to take a back seat.
The last 12 months have seen the so-called “Formula 1 on water” go through an evolution that has brought investment in its teams from celebrities Hugh Jackman, Kylian Mbappe and Anne Hathaway, while capital investment from Ares Management has strengthened the league’s financial moorings.
SailGP managing director Andy Thompson describes the first five iterations of the league as “an incredible success story”.
“If you look at season one, we had revenues of $10m and our owner committed to funding the business over a five-year period,” he adds.
“We’ve been successful in raising revenue to an extent such that we don’t actually require any further funding from [Ellison], which is a fantastic measure of success.”
SailGP expansion
City PM revealed at the conclusion of the SailGP season that Abu Dhabi, Mexico and China were fighting it out to be the 14th team on the roster in 2027 after Swedish entry Artemis joins ahead of this month’s 2026 opener in Perth.
And Thompson confirmed in December that the series is targeting races in India, Italy, South Korea and Hong Kong in coming years, as well as eyeing an Indian team. Team spots now go for upwards of $60m.
The current season will begin on 17 January in Perth before legs in the likes of New Zealand, Brazil, Bermuda and New York and, in July, the UK. Hosting fees are understood to total eight figures in some locations.
Saint-Tropez will host in September before a European race in October — in Geneva — with the season concluding with back-to-back events in the United Arab Emirates.
“I think we can go to the very top,” Thompson adds. “We’ve really got a strong racing product that [matches] modern day consumption habits.
“We are free from the governance-related matters that other sports have been tripped up by over the years. Our ambition by 2030 is to be one of the top global sports championships.
“Now we want to break through and compete side by side with some of the major players in global sports like MotoGP and those other amazing championships.
“I don’t think we’ll be quite Formula 1 in five years but we are 75 behind them.
“If you look at our cohort of sponsors, those are the expectations of SailGP, so that’s where we need to be.”
State of play
The wider SailGP sponsor roster includes the likes of UAE trio DP World, Emirates and Mubadala, as well as Oracle and Rolex.
Featured team title sponsors include Red Bull, Bonds, Emirates, NorthStar, Rockwool and Deutsche Bank.
In December Ellison reportedly gave a $40.4bn personal guarantee in Paramount’s bid to buy Warner Bros amid interest from streaming giant Netflix. He’s not short on spare change.
And his Oracle brand, of which he was chief executive for nearly 40 years until 2014, now has associations with Red Bull Racing. Ellison owns the Indian Wells Tennis Garden and has history in America’s Cup sailing, seeing his US team win the title.
But in five years he’s managed to found and fund a premium sporting product which now turns $200m centrally and has celebrity and private capital alike fighting to be part of it.
Sailing may seem out of touch to many, but the business model of SailGP is one many struggling sports may wish to study. They’re not profitable yet, but one cannot count that possibility out in the coming years and that’s to be admired.