Nearly 10,000 fans gathered this past weekend to watch some of the world’s top sailors race past the Statue of Liberty, with the iconic New York City skyline as their backdrop. SailGP, a fast-growing sailing league in its fifth season, held the Mubadala New York Sail Grand Prix in New York Harbor for crowds seated in stands along the water’s edge.
The investors and organizers behind SailGP believe that high-speed boats and exciting athletes can bring young fans to a sport that many consider stuffy and inaccessible. The race was the third in the US Rolex SailGP Championship, following events in Los Angeles and San Francisco; in total, the season will include 14 events on five continents, with hopes to expand in coming years.
Attendees saw a brutal race through the rain on Saturday, followed by a final round on Sunday. The Spanish team took the top prize, with New Zealand and France ranking in second and third, respectively. Saturday’s weather made it “a super, super tricky day,” said Anna Weis, an American sailor. “These are the kind of days [where] as sailors you’re coming back and just scratching your head and thinking, Wow, this is really hard.”
DJ Khaled with sailing fans.
The league hopes that the international audience that has fueled the explosive growth of Formula 1 will find similar thrills on the water, according to Leah Davis, SailGP’s chief marketing officer.
According to SailGP’s chief marketing officer Leah Davis, the league hopes to capture the excitement of the international audience that has driven Formula 1’s explosive growth—and deliver that same level of thrill on the water. “How do we take sailing to a modern, younger, global audience in a format that makes sense to today’s sporting landscape?” she asks. “We’ve spent so many years really perfecting the product on the water, but now it’s all about how do we scale the experience and the fun? We call it après-sail, which is our take on that guest experience.” Last week, Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds became co-owners of the Australian team, while other investors include Anne Hathaway and Issa Rae.
DJ Khaled holds a unique role with SailGP as its official Chief Hype Officer.
Sailors battled torrential rain on Saturday.
“Sailing as a sport has always been quite hard to bring to people visibly, to bring close to the spectators,” says Nicole van der Velden, a member of the victorious Spanish team. “The platform that SailGP has made makes it really attractive for people to watch, [including] people that have never been into sailing. It’s really cool to see that it’s reaching a bigger public.”
Adds Davis: “Once people see it, it’s pretty easy to fall in love within the first few minutes. You can see it’s short, sharp flying boats. That’s definitely new. We want to be a bit fun…our brand is [about] getting people engaged with a bit of a twinkle in our eye.”
