Sailing Links
The last few Americas Cups have demonstrated that sailing can be put on TV. Mostly sailors watch, and that is not enough to make it pay. The boats are getting more exciting, drones and other technologies are driving down the cost, and some changes to the format of the racing could make our sport appeal to a non-sailing audience. I have put together this page of links to help enthusiastic sailing watchers like me find great content. If enough of us watch, maybe more content will be made!
Jay’s Best Places to Watch (or listen to) Sailing
1. Star Sailors
The SSL finals in the Bahamas is the best sailing on TV (well, the web that is). The broadcasts cover the races start to finish, the commentating is excellent, the format is super exciting with a 4 boat shoot out for the win on the final day. Try this out on your non sailing friends and you may be surprised!
2. Sail GP
The boats are cool, the coverage is great, the venues are crazy close to the shore, and there are wipe outs. These F50 foiling cats are much faster than the Stars — last season they broke 50 knots! The races only last about 20 minutes so non sailors might like it too.
3. Americas Cup
The Americas Cup is a circus, and a good deal of the coverage is aimed at insiders, and the boats are unconventional, and it only happens every three or four years, and the rules change every time. Despite all of this, I cannot look away! Also, there is great coverage of the 34th Americas Cup on the YouTube channel. This was the greatest comeback in the history of sports. Unfortunately, race 19 is not available. My guess is some old media company has the rights and is not sharing.
Its big money, 10 awesome boats, venues around the world, and very close racing. Sometimes they broadcast the entire race, sometimes they post miserable 2 minute summaries.
5. World Sailing TV
Every year there are 4 World Cup Series events held around the world. These events are for the Olympic classes, so there are tons of races and tons of boats and everyone speaks different languages. Like the Olympics itself, it makes broadcasting very difficult. Most of the videos are quick summaries that race through all of the classes. Every so often they will put up an awesome medal race where the outcome is not pre-determined and those are very fun to watch.
Here are a few others to keep in mind:
Shirley Robertson’s Podcast: Shirley does the color commentary on many of the top events and is extremely good at it. She also did a show on CNN called Mainsail — Which did a great job introducing sailing to a wider audience. In 2019 she started podcasting and if you follow sailing at all, it is a must listen.
Bar Karate Podcast: I have no doubt Jordan Spencer, Nick Bice, and Bret Perry could make any subject fun and interesting to listen to. Well, sometimes they wander away from sailing a bit in their podcast but I don’t care because it is just fun listening to these guys. Oh and they get great guests as well.
The World Sailing Show: This a monthly recap of sailing events going on around the world. It is often dominated by the ocean races, and if you are following any of the events as they happen, the recap uses content you have already seen. It is well done nevertheless.