Oracle Corporation CEO Larry Ellison looks on after Oracle Team USA skippered by James Spithill lost race 1 of the America’s Cup Finals on June 17, 2017 in Hamilton, Bermuda. ” width=”970″ height=”646″ data-caption=’Larry Ellison looks on after Oracle Team USA lost race 1 of the America’s Cup Finals on June 17, 2017 in Hamilton, Bermuda. <span class=”lazyload media-credit”>Xaume Olleros/Getty Images</span>’>
David Ellison’s Paramount is pursuing a $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery that remains under regulatory review. His father, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, is closely involved in the financing: a trust in his name has agreed to provide roughly 40 percent of the funding. The deal also has a connection to one of Ellison’s longest-running personal interests: sailing. Paramount-owned CBS Sports Network has an agreement through 2027 to broadcast SailGP, the annual global sailing league operated by F50 League, a company majority-owned by Ellison.
Ellison’s involvement in sailing has long combined competition and business. He raced aboard his own yachts, backed America’s Cup teams and later co-founded SailGP with his sailing partner, Russell Coutts. His competitive career dates to at least the 1990s, when he owned and served as captain of the 78-foot yacht “Sayonara.” The boat won three straight ILC Maxi World Championships from 1997 through 1999.
In 1998, “Sayonara” was first to cross the finish line in the Sydney-to-Hobart yacht race, with Ellison aboard. Severe weather made that year’s event one of the deadliest in its history, killing six sailors.
Ellison later focused on sailing’s most prestigious prize: the America’s Cup, an international contest in which yacht clubs compete for the trophy. The winner also gains substantial control over the format and rules of the next competition.
After several unsuccessful campaigns, Ellison’s BMW Oracle Racing team, representing San Francisco’s Golden Gate Yacht Club, won the Cup in 2010 after two years of litigation over the event’s rules. The final in Valencia pitted Ellison’s 90-foot trimaran, a three-hulled boat, against Ernesto Bertarelli’s Alinghi, a catamaran with two hulls. Oracle won both races, returning the trophy to Golden Gate Yacht Club.
Rebuilding sailing for television
The victory gave Ellison and Coutts significant influence over the next America’s Cup. They used it to address problems that had long limited elite sailing’s commercial appeal: campaigns were costly, sponsorship was declining, and races could be hard for television viewers to follow.
For the 2013 America’s Cup in San Francisco, they introduced 72-foot catamarans, moved races onto shorter courses closer to shore, and added preliminary events. Organizers also developed broadcast graphics that displayed course boundaries and other race information on screen.
The changes helped produce a dramatic 2013 final. Oracle Team USA began with a two-point penalty and fell behind Emirates Team New Zealand 8–1. It then won eight straight races to retain the Cup, 9–8.
New Zealand defeated Oracle 7–1 in Bermuda four years later, ending Ellison’s control over the next edition. But Ellison and Coutts did not abandon the format. Instead, they adapted its central ideas into SailGP, a separate annual league.
From America’s Cup to SailGP
SailGP debuted in 2019 with six national teams competing in five events aboard identical F50 catamarans. The F50 was developed from the AC50 used in the 2017 America’s Cup. At its 2018 launch, SailGP described itself as a global annual competition built around standardized boats, national teams and short-format racing.
The structure turned Ellison’s influence from a series of America’s Cup campaigns, held every few years, into a permanent international league. SailGP now has 13 national teams competing in 13 events in 2026, up from six teams and five events in its inaugural season.
The league has also shifted team ownership to outside investors. In February, Doug DeVos’ American Magic acquired Denmark’s ROCKWOOL Racing team for more than $60 million. In June, MSP Sports Capital bought a majority stake in New Zealand’s Black Foils. Terms were not disclosed, but SailGP managing director Andy Thompson told Sports Business Journal that the deal set a new high valuation for the sale of a majority stake in a SailGP team. All 13 teams are now privately owned.
The Oracle connection
SailGP still carries substantial Oracle influence. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure processes race data used by sailors, coaches, officials and broadcasters. Teams can review one another’s data after races, while Oracle’s machine-learning tools analyze telemetry—data sent from equipment in real time—to flag potential mechanical failures.
The business has also expanded beyond racing. In 2022, SailGP launched SailGP Technologies, which offers engineering, manufacturing, software, control system and broadcast graphics capabilities developed through high-performance sailing. The company said it would apply those tools to projects in other industries.
David Ellison’s media companies also had ties to his father’s sailing ventures well before the CBS agreement, signed earlier this year. Skydance Productions made The Wind Gods, a documentary about Larry Ellison’s 2010 America’s Cup campaign that aired nationally in 2013.
In 2022, Skydance Sports partnered with the America’s Cup on an all-access documentary series tied to the 2024 competition in Barcelona. David Ellison was among the project’s executive producers.
