Sir Russell Coutts uses the analogy of a rock band when reflecting on the world of professional sailing.
The Olympic gold medallist, five-time America’s Cup winner and now SailGP chief executive has a decorated history in the sport, but says he never had the comfort of stability in where the next gig would come from.
“You’d do an event and then you’d say, ‘oh the event’s over, now what do I do?’ You might start to look at that towards the end of that event, and if you were in the right place at the right time and had the right results you might get the next gig,” he says.
“It was a highly risky profession, more so than even most sports professions. You’re always judged on your ability to perform. Don’t get me wrong, that’s always there, just like it is in any job, but probably more graphic in sports because the results are there for everyone to see, there’s no dispute over whether you’ve won or lost.
“From that point of view, it’s always there in professional sports, but there wasn’t the usual protection for an athlete that they have in most sports where they have a contract and if they get injured, there’s considerations for that, or there’s insurance around certain things and so forth. You didn’t have all of those processes before and basically once the campaign ended, you start again.”
From SailGP’s beginnings, it has been this gap in the market Coutts has believed he could fill; something to keep the world’s top sailors in regular and consistent competition, in a fan-friendly format both for those watching at the venues and those watching on the broadcast.
When the league had its debut season in 2019 – featuring six teams competing on identical boats and ultimately being won by Australia – many had billed it as a competition designed to rival the America’s Cup, though Coutts has always maintained that was not the intention when he and Oracle founder Larry Ellison devised SailGP.
In seasons since, the league has expanded to now feature 12 teams – still contested on one-design boats - which include many of the top America’s Cup sailors, with those involved in both events able to split their time between the two and get valuable time on the water together.
The Black Foils are an example of this as the team has been comprised largely of sailors who are also involved with Emirates Team New Zealand since they joined SailGP in season two.
This year, SailGP even bought an old America’s Cup AC50 foiling catamaran from Team NZ to convert into a one-design SailGP F50 so they would have enough boats for every team to remain in the competition in season five.
“Pete [Burling] and Blair [Tuke] approached them, so that’s helpful, but secondly, my comment on that is there’s room for both sports properties; more than enough room,” Coutts said.
“I liken it to Champions League and Premier League. You don’t get Champions League criticising Premier League and you don’t get Premier League criticising Champions League – they co-exist and they’re both fantastic sports properties. I can cite examples like that in many sports. I don’t think we’re oversaturating the market with content in terms of high-performance sailing – we’re not even close to that.
“To be honest, from SailGP’s perspective, we’re probably more focused on sports like the NBA, Formula 1, that we feel we learn marketing and commercial lessons from and can apply that to the learning we are having as we get further into developing this sports property. I really don’t see it the same way as some other commentators do.”
SailGP will return to New Zealand next month, visiting Auckland for the first time on January 18-19. The event will be a milestone moment for the league as it will be the first to feature a 12-team lineup, after France sat out in Dubai due to their boat not being ready in time to sail – and will also see the introduction of new high-speed foils that – in the right conditions – Coutts believes could see the boats hit speeds around 100km/h on the Waitemata Harbour.
“We’d have to be unlucky probably not to get good weather, but if we get a fresh or even a strong southwesterly, I’m not kidding you, it’ll probably be the event of the year in terms of a SailGP event,” he said.
“The first leg will be coming straight at the grandstands at full speed. The new high-speed falls, in the right conditions, you’d expect to deliver speeds of over 100 kilometres per hour.
“They’re predicted to do up to 110 kilometres per hour, but that’s with the high-speed rudders on. So, you’d fully expect to see over 100 kilometres per hour, which on the water is just incredible, particularly when the racing is this close.”
The new foils are one of a number of plans in the works for SailGP, with the league having now made an imprint on the global sporting scene with the series expanding to 14 regattas this year across 11 countries in Oceania, America, Europe and the Middle East.
SailGP also introduced athlete transfers in this past off-season, which saw several high-profile athletes on the move including Andy Maloney (New Zealand to Brazil), Giles Scott (Great Britain to Canada) and Kyle Langford (Australia to Italy).
Coming into the new season, 10 of the 12 teams in the series were privately owned, with New Zealand and Spain the only league-funded teams – though Coutts said there were some exciting announcements on the horizon for the Spanish team in that space.
While there was a time when teams were available to be purchased at operating costs, Coutts said the league wouldn’t sell a team for anything less than US$50m now, and big-name sponsors like Rolex, Mubadala, Oracle, DP World and Emirates have come on-board.
“All of these things allow you to plan things in a more controlled way,” Coutts says.
“If we look at the technology evolution on the boats, we can plan things such that we don’t inflate the cost for teams unnecessarily over one season, also our build schedule doesn’t become incredibly expensive because we can plan things over five seasons.
“Already with our designers and so forth, we are looking at, ‘OK, what are we going to do next season?’
“That’s already being planned in the pipeline. We’re planning on improving the athlete training and all of those sort of things. You can plan them over a longer period of time which, of course, you gain huge efficiencies when you do that.
“It possibly wasn’t all obvious from the get-go, but the more we’ve got into it, the more obvious it is that there’s a huge amount of benefits structuring it properly.”
Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.
A solid weekend saw the New Zealand crew back on the podium in SailGP's return.