Postponed Sailgp series will kick off again in 2021

All events due to take place this year in Russell Coutts’s grand prix circuit Sailgp have been rescheduled for 2021. The ‘Season 2’ series planned for San Francisco in April, New York in June, and in UK and Denmark in August and September are all being moved to the same venues running from April next year.

The cancellations are a huge blow for a series attempting to establish itself as the commercial parallel to the America’s Cup, based loosely on the concept of Formula One and with a focus on the value of TV rights. These had been secured for the 2020 season, and earlier this year a minority stake in the company was bought by global entertainment company Endeavor.

Sailgp has been underwritten by Larry Ellison. Teams have several years in which to become fully self-funding. To date, only British team INEOS and the Danish team, backed by Rockwool, is fully sponsored. Coutts has said the cost of running a team is around US$7M a year.

Coutts, who is CEO of Sailgp, commented: “As we face this health emergency, our geographic diversity unfortunately becomes a potential liability both to ourselves and those around us. Our focus must necessarily shift to returning at a time when our events do not present undue risk.”

He said that the downtime will be used to make improvements to the F50 catamaran one-design, and to simulator technology, data integration and AI. He also implied that one area being looked at more closely is a “gaming platform” – esailing is becoming increasingly popular and had a boom during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Sailors who are under contract for the series are being paid 50% of the agreed income, but other staff have been reduced. Sailgp teams now face new challenges in finding sponsorships and making commercial deals post-pandemic.