Business of Speed Podcast - "I Hate Losing More Than Anything" - US SailGP Team Principal, Mike Buckley

Episode Date: February 22, 2026

Mike Buckley is the newly appointed Team Principal of the US SailGP team—and a former world champion sailor. In this episode, he breaks down what separates winners from everyone else, why preparation beats talent, and how he's building the US SailGP team into the world's next iconic sports brand.We dig into:Growing up with a single mom on Cape Cod and finding salvation in sailing at Tabor AcademyThe anatomy of a winning mindset (and why Tom Brady's pregame routine matters)Why "winning off the water" doesn't mean losing focus on winning on the waterHow the US SailGP team is becoming the Dallas Cowboys of sailingThe star-studded ownership group (including a certain tech/business icon)Why Auckland sailing fans might teach the world what SailGP can be

Hola, Vincenzo. Hola, Lali. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you? Excited today? I'm excited because we're going in the water today. Well, kind of. Like, we're not going in the water. It's really cold here, and I'm sure it's cold in Toronto, but we get to go in the water with somebody who knows the water far better than I think both of us do,

and that would be new team principal of the U.S. SailGP team, Mike Buckley. Mike, welcome to the show. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me. SailGP has gotten a lot of attention lately. Like, the growth is tremendous. I think there's a lot of parallels to other sports that have four wheels and motors that we won't necessarily compare you to. But I do think the engineering aspect of it is tremendous.

I know nothing about sailing. I'm going to go into this completely, you know, fresh with sailing. So I'd love to hear fully, you know, your perspective on it from someone who is doing this constantly, who's really made a life of this, right? You grew up in New England, right? I did. I grew up, I was born in Boston. I grew up on Cape Cod. Big Patriots fan.

so we got pats in the super bowl this weekend hopefully uh hopefully they can they can pull through as they've done many times the last deck couple decades i mean quick aside i'm also from new england i'm in connecticut so south of you and uh not a patriots fan steelers fan so you guys i'm a dolphins fan dolphins fan you're in my division so i detest the patriots all right uh My wife works for Stephen Ross, so that's, well, you know, Dolphins is a second favorite team for our family. I've had a lot of respect for Mike Tallman over the years. He's one of the best.

Obviously, he's parted ways, but he's a class act, so I've actually always followed what he's done from the coaching standpoint, leadership standpoint. He's, you know, 19 years in one position, especially at that level, is quite fascinating. And maybe there'll be some parallels here for you as well. let's go let's start out grew up in new england how did you how did you get started sailing what was what was that foray into the world on the water for you yeah um for me i grew up playing

other sports i grew up with a single mom that worked three jobs uh i never met my dad and i think sports was like my mom's way of one it was sort of free babysitting and two you know sports is sort of the ultimate you know kind of leadership course right you know how to work with others and, and discipline and, you know, uh, everything in between. And so I was, I grew up playing hockey and football and I got to go to a private boarding school, which is sort of like my aha moment in my life. And, and, you know, thought I was thought that was going to be the real start of my, my ice hockey career. And, you know, turned out there were about a million kids that were way better than me at ice hockey out there. Um, and that was a really rude awakening.

Uh, but it's a school that's on the ocean. It's called Tabor Academy and they call it the school by the sea and they have at the time had the best sailing program in the world high school sailing program in the world and just kind of like watch these kids freshman year walk around and they were out on the water and i was like just always curious my mom always loved the water and uh yeah i just decided i was going to give it a try and the day i tried it i fell in love with it and kind of treated it like it was hockey or football which was probably fairly unique a lot of the kids it was their i don't know it was their pastime their hobby you know and for me it was uh it was it was my way to you know compete and and get into college and so on and so forth so uh yeah

i never really never looked back so the i like to ask uh professional athletes this at some point along the way and it might that point might come later in sailing because it's a little bit more forgiving and when you're racing a car if you're not like spectacular by the time you're 12 it's it's kind of hopeless, perhaps. At what point did you realize, you know what, I'm actually pretty elite at this among my peers, and I could have a career doing this if I if I buckle down? At what point in your life does that happen? I don't know. You know, I never really thought I was elite at it. I still don't. I just I absolutely hate losing more than anything on earth. And I really loved learning. And, you know, I was never very good in school learning, but I've always been

like a very visual learner. And I loved seeing what the good kids were doing and trying to emulate them. And, you know, when you kind of embrace being the underdog, which is sort of kind of in my DNA, like, yeah, it was there was never a moment where I realized I was elite. It was a moment where I realized, like, if I put in the work I can have, you know, I can get to where I want to get to. It's interesting. You said something that you hate losing every professional race car driver we've spoken to when i ask them what the addiction is it's never to speed or control it's to winning they all hate losing with a passion and they just want to win yeah yeah you know i i think you you hear that a lot right and and i think you know successful people in business

or sport or whatever i i think there is you know a shared belief and gene uh that you know the hate for losing and winning's fun, but you know, the trophy that you, you may win or the award you may win, right? Like the people really go and look at them, you know, the next day, maybe the next day, sure. But like that, you know, that, that feeling, that horrible feeling you have in your stomach on the plane ride home or, or whatever it is, when you go back to your family of losing like that to me is like, it's always there every day. So you want to want to limit that as much as possible, which is way easier said than done since we're talking about winning some like then this has become a thread for us too i'd love to hear your thoughts on the anatomy of a winning mindset what

it like what if you had to break it down into what goes into the winning mindset not you know not you can't always win we understand that it's part of the sport it's part of life but what goes into the mindset of a winner i think it's all about preparation winners are typically more prepared than the competition right they never feel content with where they are they always feel underprepared and and that they have to prepare more and you know when you i was watching a clip with tom brady the other day talking about you know being prepared and he would treat his spring football games and his you know it is his pre-season games no differently than the super bowl and you know when he would get in in the super bowl it already it already run the play

a hundred times successfully or a thousand times successfully. So it was just no different, right? His heart rate didn't go up. His, you know, his voice, you know, wasn't any different talking to the players, right? Because if you start to act differently in a certain moment, everybody feeds off that if you're the leader and then they start to act different and then it's a spiral and all of those things come from preparation. And we see that in, on the USLGP team. And when, you know, when we compete on an F50, which is an incredibly sophisticated boat that we have the least, you know, one of the least experienced teams on an F50, uh, we're one of the newer teams in the league. And so, you know, we right now don't have that full feeling of preparation. It's,

it's not because we're not working our butts off, but you know, we don't have the reps. You only get to use the boat the day before racing for one to two hours and all the other teams are using them for one to two hours right so there's their learning curve is is a little bit more horizontal but it's they're still learning the best teams are still learning every day we're learning more because we kind of we're newer but and we're you know i think we're taking some steps to catch up but for us it's balancing that um you know being prepared true confidence comes from proper preparation or some combination thereof something like that that's for however the saying goes that's one of my favorite sayings luck is when preparation meets opportunity and

it's so true you have to be prepared no one's lucky you don't get lucky if you're not prepared that chance is going to pass you by so i that sits with me very well because yeah people often call people lucky for whatever break they get in life no they were very prepared and then when the opportunity came along they executed because they were so well prepared so yeah you make you make your own luck right some people people have it have it a bit easier than others like there's that there's no doubt in that but i feel like at the end you know the people that you know that that put in the work eventually get to the top let's talk a little bit about the the two hats you wear because you are a natural born like athlete sailor competitor you said you hate

losing so obviously there's there's there's this need to want to maybe go faster try harder there's there's you're flirting with the edge at all times but now you're the team principal so if if the boat something happens to the boat you have to pay for it so how do you draw the line where do you draw the line which hat sort of takes president over the other one yeah i mean on on the sporting side we're always pushing uh it's the only way you can sail these boats the second you take your foot off the gas you know something bad happens if you're just like delivering it around the race course, you're definitely in last place. We've been there, done that. You're, you're not sailing the boat the way it's designed. It's designed to push the limits, you know, and, and that feels

uncomfortable when, when you're not, when you don't have the experience. Right. And so it's a, it's a, it's a little bit of jumping two feet into the deep end and just going for it. You know, there's also an incredible amount of risk and things like that. So you're, you're constantly balancing as you're getting more and more experience, you know, how far to push your foot on the gas but the reality is is is once you kind of put this boat into into sailing mode and you know taylor comes into the comm system and says you know here we go whatever whatever it is when when he kind of lets everybody know it's time it's time to get going the boat goes from zero you know to 50 or 60 miles an hour and there's no you don't get to just say like hey

hold up for a sec uh i'm not because we race in these really compact areas that are they're basically too small for the the boats that that we use all by design to make it more exciting and bring it closer to the fans and the fans closer to us but like you don't get to go straight for more than 30 seconds in some cases depending on where we get off of our chase boat you can go straight for like 15 seconds and there's a huge rock wall that if you hit would be catastrophic so you really have to be prepared you really have to put all the you know bs in your life and whatever else is on your mind you know out when you get on that boat there's one thing in mind and that's in that i just i just wanted because you said zero to 60 really quickly and um i was

talking to someone the other day about sail gp and they said oh 60 that's like i do that on the highway i'm like yeah and your honda civic so you you had this great conversation with james vowels and you explained a little bit about why 60 and your honda civic on the i-95 isn't the same as 60 on the boat. Can you explain to people why and what makes it quite a bit more challenging? Yeah, and I agree with whoever gave you that feedback, right? It's like, you know, an F1 car goes 200 or whatever they're going, right? And when we say we go 65 miles an hour, it doesn't sound super fast. You know, 65 is significantly faster than most powerboats, especially if there's any sort of waves. You know, powerboats and waves are hopeless because you're just getting

smashed. We just kind of carved through them with the foils. But yeah, I think what I said to James and my, my analogy is you're driving down the highway in your car while you're driving, you crawl out the window, you get on your roof and you stand on your roof in the rain, you know, and that's the key part in the rain, it would feel like you were going a thousand miles an hour and you would probably fall off. It's yeah, it's a, it's a thrill when the water hits you in the face, you know, sometimes it's, it's like getting punched in the face. I mean, it's ripped people's helmet's off it's knocked people out um you know mother nature doesn't get pushed around and when you when you're going that fast and you have to maneuver you know constantly because you're in a

compact area yeah it's it's all on yeah i mean you guys are you're testing not only like you said mother nature so you're not testing just the limits of engineering you're also testing you're kind of playing with mother nature a lot right it's whatever she wants to do in that moment whatever that water is going to do you don't really have a choice which makes it the goal Yeah, the goal with mother nature is to tie. She's always going to win eventually. She's always step ahead. So you're just, you're just trying to tie, you know, the wind is constantly shifting. You're doing your best to make decisions. Yeah. Your experience and what you see. And then obviously you've got, you know, 12 other boats coming at you that, you know, you're trying to avoid. So yeah, it's all on. what kind of skills really quickly i know there's a big difference between a pocket cruiser and the

f50 right something you're taking out on the weekend but what skills did you have to relearn or maybe are different skills that you didn't even know from your early days of sailing to now competitive where you're racing and specifically in this machine i don't call it machinery but i in these boats. But yeah, I mean, I think, you know, all the same principles apply, but they there is a microscope on every one of them. And every, you know, the six people on our boat on, you know, on a modern kind of simple racing boat, which is pretty sophisticated in its own right, there's very few people on the boat that could like, you know, cause a catastrophic event, Right. You could make the boat go slower. You could screw up a maneuver. You'll get yelled at. You might get your butt kicked, whatever. 50. There's six people that at any moment they can hit the wrong button at the wrong time and cause, you know, a catastrophic event, which, you know, I've been part, I've been, you know, very lucky or unlucky to be part of twice.

And I think the other thing is the communication. So unlike your traditional boat, if you've got six people on the side of the boat racing, you know, at some of the highest levels, I can say something under my breath to the person next to me about the person on the front that maybe did something wrong or right or whatever it is. And if I don't want them to hear me, they don't hear me. on the f50 you say something all six people on the boat hear you the pit wall hears you and if you know the broadcast happens to be keyed in on your boat your family hears you your friends hear you your haters and the world hears you right and so how you treat your teammates is under a massive microscope because if i if i say to you like you know you suck or or whatever the thing is you might not care in the moment because you're a competitor and you're tough and all that but you get home and your boyfriend your girlfriend your husband your wife whatever your mom your dad whoever it is says you know why'd mike tell you you're an idiot right now all of a sudden you're

like oh i didn't even realize yeah that that didn't feel really good right and so that's something that i think we've had to like really learn over and over again we still are and you're out of breath everyone on the boat can hear you whatever it is right when you swear or you tell somebody that they're right or wrong or whatever everybody hears you yeah um and so you kind of like i talk a lot about Navy SEALs. I have no idea what it's like to be a Navy SEAL, but I, you know, I love Navy SEAL shows. I read a lot about them. From what I can tell, they're incredible communicators, right? Everybody's responsible for a job. Everybody knows what to do when that job went right or wrong and they can go into the next thing and they could communicate with hand signals or taps or,

or whatever it may be. You know, when something goes wrong, they don't all just start shooting up into the air, you know? Um, and when we first got on an F50, that's what we did, right? Like, it was like something went wrong and everybody's just like, you know, screaming, you know, what the, you know what? And, uh, and so that's something that we spent a lot of time working with sports psychologists, working with communication specialists, and just like looking ourselves in the mirror and like, wow, what does it, what does that sound like when I say that to everybody? That doesn't sound very good. And it's even on the other side, the positive, right? You don't want to get people super up. The best competitors are pretty flat winning or

losing. Okay. You talked about the six other people on the boat and there's something that I love about sailing that's very unique. And I have been in many a J24 regatta in my life. And something that I love about sailing is that it's mixed teams of men and women. And that doesn't really happen in many sports. There's women competing against men in perhaps equestrian and motorsport, but it's against each other, not as a team. And that's something very unique. Maybe perhaps that people don't realize is that these, you have women on your team. It's a, it's a mixed sport. There's women and men. How, how is that dynamic between at that level? Is it, is everyone just like, it doesn't matter right at that point in that elite level of sailing? Well, you know,

I think that's one of the coolest, uh, you know, aspects of SailGP men and women competing with and against each other at the highest level. I think it's it's kind of an under told story that we are co-ed. I agree. Men's sports have been a thing forever. Women's sports have have just started to have their well-deserved moment that I hope continues. Again, I start off by telling you I was raised by a single mom. So I'm, you know, team mom all the way here. And like, you know, women's sports have had this huge growth, but they've been at it for a really long time. Co-ed sports, you know, we kind of sit in the middle there and there's not a lot of co-ed sports being talked about. And I think it's a pretty unique story and I think it's quite compelling. But yeah, you know, there's no question that women have had to work harder in sailing to get to the top. you know it's you know you look at anna weiss on our team she's which where she she's behind me

here on on the wall you know and you know she works her ass off to compete with the guys physically uh she's the only grinder in sail gp that's a woman so she competes with the strongest men you know kind of mano y mano and you know there are a lot of people that doubted her that doubted me for you know putting her in that position and you know she's kicking ass um and And but, you know, I don't I don't think we've done enough. There needs, you know, someday, you know, we need to get to, you know, equal in SailGP and really set the tone. But, yeah, I think it's a really cool dynamic to have Martina Grail come in and drive the Brazilian team. She is just an unreal competitor, two time Olympic gold medalist.

You know, I I hear rumors that there's going to be another woman driving an expansion team in 2027, which is which is awesome. But yeah, I think, I think that's, it's, it's a great part of SailGP and, and something that, yeah, I'm really proud to, to, you know, be in an ecosystem that's, you know, pushing, pushing the barriers here. It's fantastic. And it's, that's the, that's the only way we're going to get little girls into sailing, right? Into the Optis, into the lasers. If they don't see girls like Anna or Martina that they can look up to, it's harder for them to relate. So it is spectacular to see this. And I'm so, so excited that SailGP is doing that. Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, you look at what, you know, what Lindsey Vonn has done to the sport of skiing, not women skiing, skiing in general, right? Globally. And, you know, we started out by talking about how inspired we were by her words this morning, right? I think, you know, people like Anna can play similar roles and inspire people. I always, I always try to remind Anna when she says, I want to, you know, I want to inspire little girls. That's, that's great. But I actually think you're, you can, you know, you can do more than just little girls, right? I think, I think you can inspire people to, you know, challenge the status quo. I want to, you're absolutely right, both of you. And I think that all sports have, have that challenge, right? Have that issue specifically these co-ed sports, like we're talking about where there is, there is a little bit of, there's a lot of discrepancy in how they're promoted as well. It's always like the men's sport and everything else. But I want to switch gears and talk a little bit about the business side, because you do also have that part of you, right? You're on, you're on the boat, you're sailing, but you're also doing a lot on the business side. What do you want people to know, those that may not know that sailing is a viable sporting property? What would you tell them about SailGP and how would you educate them? And what are you doing maybe to actively educate? What is the U.S. SailGP team doing to actively educate the new fan or the uneducated fan, maybe the investors? Yeah. I mean, I think Larry Ellison has been clear from the start of SailGP is that, you know, I think his words in the opening of the docuseries we were part of on Paramount Plus, I think his lines were, I want to create the best professional sports league in the world. He didn't say sailing league. He said professional sports league. And, you know, a big part of that is it has to be commercially sustainable, commercially profitable someday. And, you know, the whole ecosystem at SailGP is set up for that.

I think, you know, we learned really tough lessons from the America's Cup for a long time and how that is built on patronage of typically one wealthy person. And when they get bored of spending money or they achieve their personal goal, the whole thing shuts down and, you know, all the momentum is lost and SailGP is always on. What we like about it is there's a $10 million spend cap. What the spend cap did for F1, it took, you know, 10 teams that I think nine have lost money for forever. You know, all the teams on the grid, you could have taken an F1 team a few years back for basically nothing. And I think now every team is worth over a billion dollars and some of them are over five or six or seven. And a big part of that is that spend cap. You know, investors are very uncomfortable investing in things that they don't, A, understand, and B, that, you know, is set up to lose money forever, right? That if we could just spend, spend, spend, spend, spend for R&D and people and this, that, and the other, there's no return in sight. That's one of the aspects we really liked about it. And I think brands want to be along other, you know, exceptional brands and nobody wants to drink alone at the bar. Right. Um, the first, you know, coming into the league and, you know, putting, putting their stamp of approval on sale GP and then doubling down to become the title partner of the league. That was a huge moment for SailGP. But, you know, we have huge brands in the ecosystem. You've got JP Morgan and Emirates and Deutsche Bank, you know, that are other team partners. And we have Tommy Hilfiger and Amazon and AG1. And we just announced a Marriott deal. And this morning, we just announced another partner, Leighton. really amazing brands coming into our ecosystem, investing and sailing because they believe that there's a return on investment. One of the things that's quite hard right now is, I've been talking a lot about this this week, is about a month ago, we had 3.5 million viewers on CBS. Same day,

Formula One Las Vegas had 1.5 million viewers in the U.S. And our TV numbers beat the Ryder Cup final and the U.S. Men's Tennis Open final match. And when I say that to a CMO, they look at me like I have 10 heads and I spend the next 15 minutes sort of like trying to convince them that I didn't just make that number up, you know, because the numbers are enormous. And so, you know, our job now is to, you know, really educate the, you know, the brands, the fans, and we need to bring those 3.5 million people closer to our people. That is fandom. We're kind of a step away from true fandom right now. We have people engaged in our TV product because it's awesome. We have people engaged in our game day product because it's awesome. And the next step to like really see

the growth, in my opinion, is how do we make people love or hate the people in SailGP? That is a fan those are the people they buy they buy the shirts they write positive or negative comments on your instagram like that's fandom yeah we need the heroes and the villains right because that really tells the story and gets people with skin in the game yeah they want to know what makes you tick they want to know you know when they want to know what makes you tick and who your boyfriend girlfriend husband or wife is or or what this that and the other what your favorite clothes your favorite hat your favorite sports team right like that's fandom and that's you know that's what we need to build that trust with our fans so that that sort of thing happens

yeah i listened to a recent you were on a podcast ironically called the business of sport earlier last month at least i heard it and you had talked a little bit about drive to survive and its effect on f1 and how exactly what you just talked about the villainization or the you know some guys the heroes and building up that personal aspect i had a different question but i'm going to go this way because you you asked this or you said this but do you do you think that that's harder and i say in sailing but i guess all motorsport was kind of very similar all other uh dry you know racing sports like our sailors do they want to be on camera like do they want would they want to do that what what barrier do you have to creating that level of let's call it drive to survive for

the sake of of everyone knows what that is what what do you have to do to get to that level yeah I think back in the day, in the 80s and early 90s, sailing had some huge personalities. A guy named Dennis Conner was on the cover of Time Magazine twice, cover of Sports Illustrated five times. Like, the covers, not the back page or something else. He was on during the Jordan era and Muhammad Ali, like, in amongst it with the most iconic athletes of all time.

And he captivated the American people, right, to get behind this underdog that went and challenged these billionaires in the America's Cup. And people weren't afraid to curse each other out or shout or scream or whatever, or wear a loud cloak, that and the other. And I think kind of the last 30 people, sailors, you know, were kind of told to, you know, shut up and dribble or whatever the thing was, right? And just keep your head down and go sailing. And that's fine. But, you know, when you go that route, you know, you're probably not going to have, you know, you're not going to reach the fandom that we're talking about in these other sports. You know, I think, you know, as a as a it sort of hit me when when Kobe Bryant died, I was I was coming out of I just had come off water in Miami. I was on my way to the airport and it showed up on the headrest of the Uber that I was in. And I remember just like being overcome with emotion, right? I'm a Celtics fan, but Kobe Bryant was always an inspiration, right? The guy, the guy was a winner.

The guy worked his ass off. He's somebody that I've never spoken to and I had tears streaming down my face. And that's, that's because he inspired me, right? And he touched me. And I think that that's true fandom when you're laughing or crying with these athletes that you've never met and you probably never will meet. and you know if if we want to take our sport to the next level we have to let people in and you know we took a step towards that with the it's called uncharted it's on paramount plus

it's a three-part series sort of like the introduction to say you know there's a little drama they start to kind of seed a little drama but yeah i think that's that's where the future's at and it's not copying drive to survive it's coming up with the next thing yeah and i and i i actually think there's nothing wrong with cop like copying or mimicking to a degree like a lot of we've had a lot of conversations with other series that want to do something similar but like we don't want to copy we don't want to just rip it off and it's like well it's okay because it's a really good concept and if it helps show up i mean obviously you're going to deliver in your style but you have personalities you want to show off and at its core

that's really what it is now how much you want to dramatize it as a whole that's up to you right the series or the property or whoever chooses to do it but i think there are so many opportunities for all sorts of racing series to to do something similar and we have youtube you don't have to go and get a you know netflix to carry it they probably would at this point because you could sell netflix almost anything that's interesting enough but you have youtube you can you know connect with fans and do it that way so i just think it's fascinating and i love the series i think you guys are doing a phenomenal job to the to that point you had a record year last year i think it was over 200 million the league the series brought in right yeah uh in in revenue

or eyeballs or which revenue sorry 200 million dollars my bad i should have said dollars you don't have visibility on what the league brings in but you know i i uh i get the uh you know i get the press briefs as well uh yeah i mean it's uh i think i even read the other day 300 million yeah okay i mean it's it's incredible right and and again it's the the brand you know these enormous brands colex and dp world and emirates uh yeah it's just it's it seems like it's uh kind of got no end in sight well with all that growth two team valuations have gone up so they're at 60 million or so i was reading um 60 million or so now for for some of the team valuations how are you justifying that value to other investors if or or even you know partner

sponsors like what are you is there something that you're like is there one kind of trick you got in the bag that's like this is this is why it's worth it this is what this is what the valuation because reality is you are doing a lot of education and i say it's not other racing series but even those there's a lot of education that goes involved now we're making it even more challenging and it's even more exclusive because now you're on the water it's something that's even more i think it's harder to grasp for a lot of folks. What are you doing to justify those numbers and all of these numbers that we're throwing out there at investors and partners? Yeah, well, I hope that I hope the valuations are a lot higher than the number you just said. But, you know, it's it's

sports for the last 20 years has been one of the most successful asset classes, right? This isn't a new phenomenon. It's sort of become this thing that everybody's talking about. But, you know, look, look back at what people bought NFL teams for MLS teams or, you know, or, or any of these sports teams as, as new media platforms have, have come online, they've given more sports, uh, you know, the ability to get their, their product out to consumers. Right. And so women weren't watching the NFL years ago, right. Look at all the, all the things that the NFL has done to attract the female audience. Right. And, you know, uh, Aaron Andrews is like one of the first people to come out with clothing line for the nfl you know is made for women like how did that not

happen 50 years ago like you know there's just kind of innovation has has pushed sports to where it is obviously scarcity value is pretty interesting you know you've got to be worth many many many billions of dollars to have to throw your name in the ring to buy a big five sports team and you're only going to own the bare minimum of it yeah you're going to need investors and partners and things like that. And I think the trickle down has gone to some of these other emerging sports at a time when content is king and is easy to get out to people, whether it be YouTube or Instagram or direct to consumer or streaming. And kind of back to what I started with, what we liked about the investment is we have a spend cap and investors like spend caps

historically. If somebody said to me, how much money are you going to spend? Hey, I want to invest? And I said, okay. And they said, what's your budget for next year? Well, I don't really know. I'm just going to spend as much money as I want on marketing, as much money as I want on people, as much money as I want on flights and this, that, and the other. That's a scary investment, but worst case scenario, my spend is $10 million without any sponsorship. That's all I can spend. So yeah, we think that that's really exciting. Global sports are exciting. And then the demographic that we speak to is kind of, you know, historically more of the affluent, you know, educated consumer that is hard to reach and that these big brands, you know, want to be able to

speak to. So I wanted to touch on that a little bit. You mentioned 3.5 million viewers, which is an extraordinary number. Yeah. Do we know anything about that number? In general, let's say, let's talk to the 3.5 million but also in general are your fans fans of sailing fans of racing fans of sport what do you know a little bit about the people who are starting to really get into sale gp yeah i mean our our linear audience is above over 90 percent racing fans not sailors which is something that really excites me because one it's clear that the product that sale gp has created. The TV product is, is making it in a, you know, new markets. And then two, we know how many people sail in America. It's, you know, kind of almost 9 million. That should be low hanging

fruit for us to go and, you know, kind of get into some communities and, and, and really grab that audience that isn't watching our races right now. And, you know, that should be, that should be easy uh nothing's easy but you know that should be easier but what we've had great success with are just the racing fans that are after you know short form content our racing window is an hour on tv it's not it's not four hours or you know or three hours like that's a long time if you've got kids or you know and it's a weekend or you know everybody is just so damn busy i think yeah i think melissa and the broadcast team at sail gp have really knocked it out of the park creating a a TV product that people actually want to consume and can do it fairly quickly.

Aside from the length of the, this is also something else you had mentioned in that other podcast was it's a stadium racing. It is the short broadcast. Is there something else that's maybe been effective on the TV broadcast to attract first time viewers? Yeah. I mean, we've had some really nice time slots with CBS, you know, on the week around NFL games you know that that has been you know the league and and CBS have you know have a really strong partnership one that we expect to only get stronger now that Larry just purchased CBS so but you know before that you know it's it's been very successful and you know I think people right now are looking for new things right and and as technology I try to just listen to

people that are way smarter than me which is pretty much everybody and you know all these tech people talk about the more ai takes over our lives the more the more important live sports are because it's sort of the last frontier of human interaction and you can't really replace it with technology we were talking a little bit about you know it's a global sport what exactly what does the uslgp team own i i genuinely have no clue like what is well we are a regular sport on a stadium so yeah we have a license yeah we own a license to compete in the league you know we represent the united states there can only be one team per country and you know with that license comes you know certain assets you know media revenue shares and things like that but

yeah the the league owns all the boats which you know again is like very attractive value proposition for investors and operators you know we get to you know we get to kind of benefit from the economies of scale of the league ships, all the stuff around, they pack it up, they fix it, they deliver. I was going to say, if you crash, because I saw a really bad crash, the Kiwis and the Swiss had a horror. Who pays for that? Is the league paying for the fixing of those boats? Well, in that instance, I focus on our team and I don't know who pays for that. But, you know, basically, if you're at fault, you pay for it. And all the private teams are responsible for their own actions. So you break it, you buy it.

Okay, that's interesting. But what's nice is the league will fix it. So they have a new facility that they've built in Southampton, UK. It's a state-of-the-art facility where they're able to build a boat from scratch. They do everything in-house and all the componentry and everything is built there as well. When that crash happened in Perth, something gets flown from Perth to the UK. Something's already being built in the UK that's going to get flown to Auckland. And they kind of ships in the night.

The thing that broke gets repaired. The thing that, you know, that needs to be replaced is built. And, you know, there's just kind of they're trying to constantly make sure these boats, you know, stay on the start line. And these collisions are tough to watch, but they're part of the sport and part of racing and part F1. And it's the unfortunate thing. And lucky to have really talented people that keep us going. It's interesting because the fact that I do see how that would be very appetizing to an investor because they don't have to worry about those minutiae or some of the stress points.

So I could see how that's quite attractive. You have a lot of sort of celebrity investors. So there seems to be a sort of culture play. What is the plan moving forward now that you're team principal? How are you going to expand the business, expand the team, get more notoriety And really draw attention from these people who will never step foot on a boat, but that you want to monetize somehow and you want them to become not only fans of SailGP, but fans of the U.S. SailGP team. Yeah, I mean, you know, all of our investors, celebrity or institutional, they invested because they believe in the business and the actual investment itself. You know, I'm sure, you know, our vision was part of that.

I have an amazing partner in Ryan McKellen. Ryan was the third employee at Uber. Uber. he's a he's a absolute genius and an even better person you know and we approached him with a business plan the plan was not like hey can we just stamp your name on this and and you know tell everybody you're an owner they they invested they had their teams vet the investment you know I think one thing I'm very proud of is is you know November 8th 2023 you know we bought a team with the most diverse ownership group in the history of our sport not the history of SailGP the history

of our sport um and that's something i think is is incredible and you know uh diverse thinkers diverse backgrounds diverse industries diversity from a to z and you know ryan and i wanted to bring people in that could come with new ideas new visions new you know new efficiencies you know dj khaled's done in the entertainment business what what east is doing behind you know hollywood screen and in her businesses and what Lindsay you know has done to the sport of skiing and we have five NFL players DeAndre Hopkins, Kayvon Thibodeau, Dallas Turner that are you know what they've done on the football field and how they're building their businesses off the football field Griffin is a DJ and you know he's one of these first guys that's brought this like live set where

he's gone out and and he's you know goes out and does his sets with a guitar and drums and and really is making live music uh as a dj in front of everybody we just wanted people that were really pushing the boundaries in their space and and uh yeah we we certainly got that we got to see gary v on an f50 that's i that's what i want to see like truly want to see gary on an f it's the microphone couldn't be muted and and couldn't be bleeped we want come on you know he's gonna have you know he's gonna have his guys with him like we're trying to record it and stuff so we gotta get fully unfiltered gary from start to finish the safety training getting drowned by navy seals i mean you have to yeah gary uh gary's a good close friend so i love that man

he is that would be hysterical because just thinking of him he's made comments in the past like he's just he's not even interested in like going outdoors sometimes i mean i know things have changed because he loves he loves his business like he just loves working and uh that would be absolutely hysterical to just see him getting just shredded by my uh my wife was was at at dinner at at uh zz's uh in november 2023 just ironically there with her bosses gary walks in uh and my my wife's boss's boss goes gary bought a fucking sailing team today uh like we didn't do together that jane was my my husband so anyway small world made that up that is so funny that's so good but i mean you put yourself into those positions to

just be around those people and i mean what an investment group and i think you've put together quite the portfolio i wish you guys nothing but success uh in the season last couple questions on if you look back in five years ten years why will uslgp be valuable is it because you want a lot of championships and a lot of races or will it be because you've got this incredible lifestyle brand and i know that you know you want both but if you had to say one direction what would that direction be or why do you think it would happen i think it's because we we will have made an impact on a mass amount of people uh and i think you can interpret that in any way right different people are motivated by different things winning is certainly front of mind i talk about winning

off the water i think that gets fairly misinterpreted that i don't care about winning on the water like i couldn't be farther from the truth right but if winning on the water is the only thing that defines success for your entire brand does that that means that every other team is just a total failure that season like you can't stand businesses up like that right um and and you know you you look at the nfl and there's a lot of teams that that don't win every year and their stadiums are full and their ticket prices are going up but their players their ownership their coaching staff they touch people uh in in you know in their world of fandom and they provide this exchange of value of belief and and you know something to get behind right and so i think that

that's something that you know i spend a lot of time thinking about how we can do a better job of that historically in our sport i don't think that's that's really been a thing and you know we certainly, you know, we're, we're the U S team, but we, we want to be the second favorite team when we go to somebody else's home event. Right. Um, you know, there's no reason that we can't go to a yacht club in, in Australia or a hospital or whatever. Um, I'm sure the Australian team will do all those things too, but, um, I think kind of the, the point of view was like, oh, that's, that's their home event. I only have to worry about the U S, um, and we're a global property and there's no reason we can't be doing this every week you know and in between every

every you can be like the dallas cowboys everybody all over the world the dallas cowboys is sort of the world's team yeah art ferrari right i mean you know people think of ferrari when they think of formula one vice versa yeah the dallas cowboys or the yankees or or whatever it makes you but you know we're we're just in the you know first or second inning we have a long way to go to be uh in the same sentence as as those you know iconic properties but we feel pretty uh feel like we're in a pretty good spot having having the u.s team i think with you at the helm all puns intended it will go very well i have a final final sort of fun question it's all about it's all about the team i think i said that to one of you guys on linkedin today yeah yeah sure my face gets

plastered up, but, you know, I have a really lucky to have some really smart people from other sports, from other industries, really amazing investors that I can pick up the phone and say, I got a problem. What do I do? You know, what would you do? I mean, you know, that's the secret sauce is surround yourself with people that are smarter than you. Before we let you go, I just, I'm curious, you've had the chance to travel the world to race in different categories everywhere. What is your personal favorite place to race in the whole world? I'm going to give you two. Sorry. One is New York because I live here. It's the best city in the world. It's got the best in the world, the best skyline in the world. But

Auckland has a historic group of just sailing fans. And when we go there next week, you know, there's just people everywhere the bars are packed tailgating the stands you know I think there were 30 something thousand people in the stands it's just you know sailing is is is their NBA or NFL you know with with kind of with rugby and and cricket and so yeah there's just something special you race right off downtown Auckland it's also an amazing skyline but yeah they just they just love sailing there and that's something that I've never experienced uh until being part of CLGP. Yeah. Hopefully we can bring some of that to, you know, some of the other venues we go around the world. Well, thank you so much. That race is coming up February 14th and 15th. So you

have a Valentine's Day race. Hopefully you get lots of people, lots of eyeballs. Thank you so much, Mike Buckley, for joining us. It was an absolute pleasure talking to you. Thank you, Mike. Wish you best of luck. Thank you. Cheers.