SAILGP, professional sports leagues put women

While female sports increase in popularity, professional leagues increasingly praising the value of female athletes. New professional leagues like SAILGP are launching with the advantage of building from zero, with the diversity of sexes as part of their DNA.

Non-contact and non-collision sports open the way. F1 Formula 1 F1 Academy has created a pipeline for women in motorsport, with the aim of increasing the participation and representation of women on and outside the racetrack. At the same time, he draws a more diverse fans base. According to Nielsen Sports.

Professional and female athletes are already in competition in each other in the unified league of the United Pickleball Association, the World Mixed Gender Basketball League and in Sailgp, the International Sailing League co-founded by the founder of Oracle Larry Ellison and the Yachtsman Russell Couts champion.

Founded in 2018, the UNISTART Sailing League includes 12 international teams on a high -speed catamarans of 50 feet, known as F50. At speeds of more than 60 MPH, SAILGP acquires a reputation as a kind of Formula 1 on water.

“The entire objective is to train athletes to be able to run on an F50, which is one of the most complex boats in the world – perhaps the most difficult boat to run in the world at the moment,” COUTTS, who is also Managing Director of SAILGP.

The league did not arise taking into account the objectives of gender equity, said costs, but simply sought to create the most convincing competition.

“We think that male and female athletes can compete at the top of our sport against each other and with each other, so when we saw that there was a difference in the levels of participation – and we have not really seen any logical reason for that – we have taken measures to remedy it and we will take other measures in the future,” cost cost.

To fill the experience gap with which most sailors face, SAILGP has created programs to draw and train talents. In December, his female performance camp in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, marked his largest training camp for female water athletes to date.

The league also requires that each team has at least one female athlete on board during the races and set goals to have at least two women’s athletes per racing team in key positions in the next five years. These key positions are the driver, who runs the boat; The strategist, which advises tactics; The aircraft, which adjusts the fiber carbon fiber sail from 85 to 90 feet; And the flight controller, which dictates how much the boat flies with the water.

The next SAILGP races take place on Saturday and Sunday in San Francisco, the second of the consecutive American weekend.

SAILGP has integrated inclusiveness and sustainability into competition via an impact league which is parallel to the championship on water. The teams earn points to take measures to make sail more accessible and protect the environment in order to reach the podium. The winning teams earn cash donations to their partners. The Canadian team is leading the impact league thanks to their work to offer training opportunities, sailing camps and demonstration days to introduce new Canadian athletes.

“This changes the mindframe of very competitive people to take care and compete, in a world of impact and sustainability,” said Leah Davis, director of marketing at SAIGP. “When you defy the most competitive people in the world to be gifted in something else, they will turn their eyes towards it quite quickly, and in a fairly impactful way.”

Outside the water, 43% of SAILGP suite C is a woman, compared to only 14% in 2021. For comparison, 29% of the roles of the C Suite C in fortune companies 500 are held by women, according to the Women in the Workplace 2024 report. Last year, the League introduced the APEX group’s accelerator program, aimed at increasing female representation at the higher level of the company.

He also introduced initiatives to train more women in the side of operations, technology and construction of the company’s boats. For example, SAILGP Technologies based in Southampton, in the United Kingdom, offers a learning training program – eight participants join the program each year, four men and four women. Today, 33% of SAINGP directors and 52% of department heads are women.

The global commercial strategy helps increase the attraction of the League to a new set of fans. For the first time in its history, more than half of the ticket holders present at the New Zealand championships last season in March were a trend, a trend that was stable this season.

“This demography has been ill -served in sports,” said Fiona Morgan, SAILGP objectives. “A large part of our margin in fans is young fans – and in fact, it is female fans – who probably did not think of sailing, but they like extreme sports or sustainability, or they like sports that have equity at the heart.”

In June, Tommy Hilfiger was announced as the official partner of lifestyle clothing of the SAILGP team from the United States, joining brands such as Red Bull, Emirates, Mubadala, Rockwool and Deutsche Bank in the sponsorship of individual teams. In November, SAILGP announced that he had signed Rolex as his first title sponsor.

“I do not think that many brands will go today in sponsorship which has no diversity or equity at a given time,” said Morgan. “Their consumers and investors will watch out for this.”

In September, the League has taken an important step, announcing its first driver. The double Olympic sailing champion, Martine Grael, joined the 2024-25 season for Skipper The new team of Mubadala Brazil Sailgp, making history and immediately climbing the ranking.

After championships in Dubai, Auckland, New Zealand, Sydney and Los Angeles, teams from the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand run the League. Grael managed his team before the German team Sailgp and turns out to be competitive against the more experienced American team.

“In the past – and again these days – you see a lot of people say:” Girls should not do this “,” said Grael. His answer is to call this old way of thinking: “What shouldn’t do?”

Grael attributes a large part of its early success to familiarize yourself with the boats using the SAILGP simulator, developing muscle memory before even getting on the water. Unlike traditional boats built with male sailors in mind, the Modern Dejet boats from Sailgp open opportunities for women in roles that do not require as much physical strength, she said. Knowing when to press a button and developing a good feeling for the boat is just as important for more physical functions, said Grael.

“Some guys have not understood that a girl is very capable of playing the same role they make,” she said.

Grael is part of a certain number of female athletes in competition in key positions in SAILGP – including the strategist of the Great Britain team of Emirates, Hannah Mills, and Anna Weis of the American team – and says that although women are always in the minority, things change.

With women who participate in marquee races – like Justine Puttraux in Switzerland, who took eighth place in the Vendée Globe in hand, constantly, not assisted in the world this year – they determine a path for a new cohort of women to obtain opportunities and make their mark.

“We were less limited – I grew up being said that I shouldn’t do something,” said Grael. “There are a big generation of others who look at us, and they will come out strong.”

Correction: This story has been updated to correct that the SAILGP teams in the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand run the League. It has also been updated to correct the name of the SAILGP female performance camp.