The city of Qingdao is emerging as one of the world’s great sailing venues. This is not through a lucky accident of being on the right place on the map, but through long term planning and a willingness to invest in both infrastructure, industry and sporting events that promote progress. The Extreme Sailing Series is the latest word-class sailing event to be hosted by the ‘sailing city’. The Extreme Sailing Series, which is a modern, fan-centric, innovation in competitive sailing, visited China for the first time in 2011, and the results...
read moreOur sailing brand Facebook League Table has been updated. The top 30 yacht racing properties grew their fanbases on the social media site at an average of 4.79%. There seems to be a distinct correlation between activity on the water and growth. The fastest growing properties are ones that have had news or activity in the last month. The fastest growing brand in our monitored list is Emirates Team NZ who are just outside the Top 30 with 1742 likes. This was 39.14% up on the previous month after the team announced that they would officially...
read moreThere’s been a lot of talk. A lot of talk – about how the America’s Cup will try to lessen the focus on the technology and the boat and try to make the athletes and other actors on the AC stage into personalities. Whether it should be done, whether it can be done will be down to the myriad of communications and PR folk involved. It’s a debate that happens in all sports and is something that modern athletes might just have to get used to. Jim Andrews, Senior Vice President and Editorial Director of IEG asked in a blog...
read moreOne suspects that the debate over who the audience is for the sport of yacht racing will go on for a while. There are those who are worried that younger generations might not sign up to the traditional perceptions of sailing. There are others though, who are comfortable with the prestigious, exclusive elements of sailing. While the America’s Cup seems to be abandoning segmentation in favour of a mass-market (down-market?) product, brands who want to promote to a desirable, wealthy elite have other events at their disposal. The Financial...
read moreThe world probably doesn’t need another yacht race, but having said that – where there is a market, then sports promoters will find a way to develop a product that make sense. The MOD70 has been slowly building momentum from a concept to an event that has high profile ambassadors, boats in the water and now a title sponsor for a transatlantic race. The MOD70 circuit organisers have announced that Krys Group will sponsor editions of a race from New York to the Tonnerres de Brest Maritime Festival. The Krys Ocean Race is planned for...
read moreIf there really is to be a ‘New Deal’ America’s Cup, where sailing teams can exist as sporting franchises through time without being bailed out by wealthy owners, then it is still a way off. If Emirates Team New Zealand struggles to find sponsorship, then the Cup is not quite the shiny, commercial beacon that the America’s Cup Event Authority (ACEA) wants it to be. Team NZ have consistently performed at the top of the sport and it seems to be forgotten by many that the team finished well ahead of BMW ORACLE in 2007,...
read moreRussell Coutts is the only sailor to appear in a list of athlete’s salaries by ESPN. His reported $10,000,000 salary also makes him the most highly paid New Zealand athlete. While the sum might be relatively small compared to superstars in major sports, the ‘per-game’ fee is significant indeed. Coutts is perhaps more an administrator than a sailor these days, so his salary reflects his business interests around the America’s Cup and the RC44 series, but if you divide the salary by the number of competitive events that...
read moreWhat’s the America’s Cup worth to New Zealand? It’s a question that has to be asked from time to time, given the investment in the America’s Cup by the New Zealand government, and while the television audience for the Cup may be only about half of the number that is expected to watch the Rugby World Cup to be staged in Auckland in September there is a desire for governments to invest in sailing events for reasons from tourism to marine infrastructure to national pride. The America’s Cup has the potential to be...
read moreBritish yachtsman, Nigel King will begin his 3rd Solitaire du Figaro campaign with the backing of London based E-Line Orthodontics Ltd. Raising sponsorship is as much about networking as it is about having a compelling story. Once in a while, you can get lucky with a cold call or a speculative letter sent in the mail, but good partnerships are born out of relationships and the more relationships you make, the more sponsorship you are able to raise. It’s no accident that some of the skills that the future of Britain’s offshore...
read moreEven if you wanted to compare sailing sponsorship opportunities side-by-side, it is a very difficult thing to do. We’re often asked where money should be invested into the sport, and invariably the answer is another question – what are you trying to achieve? In fact – those who are looking to sponsor sailing should be asked all kinds of questions about their goals, their audience, their geographical market presence amongst other things. It’s the same with motor-sport or football. There is not a lot of point sponsoring...
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