What The $100M Doesn't Need.
The drawdown assumes zero revenue — if no sponsor ever signs, nine rounds still run in year five exactly as they run in year one. That is the floor. This page is the six lines built on top of it, and the public scoreboard the media block answers to.
Most startup leagues die the same way: revenue projections fund the operating budget, the projections miss, and the season collapses mid-year. This championship inverts that. Every revenue line below is deliberately excluded from the $100M model — the raise buys a complete, purse-led, media-built championship with no commercial dependency. Revenue doesn't keep the lights on; it compounds a property that already runs.
Each line activates only when its proof exists — selling early means selling cheap. The precedents below are the category's published record, not projections of ours.
| Line | What it is | Precedent & benchmark | Activates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nations packages | Countries fund national programs — driver programmes, held slots, turnkey entries (indicative pricing in National Partners) | SailGP's sovereign-funded team model; national institutions fund flags on grids across sport | Founding window — open now |
| Membership & paddock | Owner-driver economics and hospitality — the paying grid | The club-racing economics that already fund GT racing worldwide | Race one |
| Commercial partners | Title, Nations Trophy presenting, category and round partners | SailGP signed Rolex at year zero; the inventory is mapped in the Founding Partners one-pager | After season-one proof — deliberately not sold thin |
| Media rights | World-feed licensing once the audience exists — the $49.75M media block builds the asset this line sells | Formula E's rights were nearly worthless in season one; its cumulative audience reached 561M by season eleven | When the scoreboard proves the asset — conversations from strength, not need |
| Franchise sales | Team and nation identities open to ownership | SailGP launch teams sold at $5–10M; latest sale $60M; $100M valuations projected by the league | Year five, by design |
| World Cup host fees | Hosting rights for the nations event the championship builds toward | The host-fee model every major international federation runs; the 2026 World Cup demonstrated the nations category at $9B scale | The World Cup cycle, beyond year five |
None of these lines appear in the drawdown. The return case does not require any single one of them to work — it requires the property to exist, which the $100M guarantees on its own. Each line that lands raises the floor under the valuation instead of propping up the operating budget.
Half the raise is media. A spend that size deserves a scoreboard — so the media block carries one, published and measured from season one.
| Metric | Category benchmark (published) | The commitment |
|---|---|---|
| Cumulative broadcast reach | SailGP season 5: ~215M dedicated audience · Formula E season 11: 561M | Season targets set with the broadcast and measurement partners, published before round one, independently measured, reported mid-season and season-end — in this room |
| Average audience per round | SailGP: ~18M per event · Formula E: 33M per race | |
| Streaming & social | SailGP: 1M+ YouTube subscribers | |
| Docuseries viewership | SailGP's first docuseries: 4M+ global |
The benchmarks above are mature-series numbers — season five and season eleven of leagues that started near zero. They're shown as the category's proven ceiling, not a season-one expectation. Season-one targets will be honest baselines; what compounds them is the ramp.
The terminal-value case leans on the SailGP franchise curve, and that comp is doing real work — it's the one number in this room we don't control. This page exists to put floors under it: six independent revenue lines, each with its own precedent, none required for the championship to run. The comp is the ceiling argument; the discipline above is the floor argument. An investor should want both.