Building an Audience: Deep v Wide
And a bit about GBR and FRA as they battle for the SailGP final
Start-up entrepreneurs are often given this advice:
“Starting a company is like jumping out of an airplane with the makings of a parachute… all you have to do is sew it together before you hit the ground.”
Anyone who has done it would probably agree. There are innumerable intricate tasks to accomplish and all the while gravity is bringing the ground closer at 9.8 meters per second per second.
On the San Francisco waterfront, 31 days from now, three sailboat racing teams will make a 15 minute dash for SailGP’s season three $1 million prize. Meanwhile, Russel Coutts and his SailGP team are staging a dozen events per year around the globe, pursuing sponsors, building and maintaining the boats, producing telecasts, and recruiting and sustaining relationships with athletes. All at once!
Russel Coutts had the idea for SailGP and serves as the front man. The founder of Oracle, Larry Ellison, is writing the checks. It has been reported that Larry gave Russel five years to make this new sports league pay for itself. Season three is just ending. So the ground is coming up fast and there is going to be some serious parachute sewing going on in Season 4!
The SailGP team has done an amazing job building something out of nothing. They have already accomplished the impossible task of making sailboat racing interesting to watch on TV. With a great product in hand, they set about to find viewers. There are many complex and competing decisions to make when building a new audience. But the most fundamental decision is picking between deep vs. wide. Is the target audience the people already interested in racing sailboats (deep) or sporting fans in general (wide)? When SailGP switched the units on the speedometers from knots (nautical miles) to kilometers last year, it was clear that they had picked wide.
I started racing sailboats at the age of 8, so I’m in the deep bucket. I have never watched SailGP with my sailboat racing friends. Conversely, I have introduced SailGP to many of my friends that don’t sail. So in this one person focus group, going wide may have been the right pick.
The Kid From France vs the Legend from Great Britain
OK, enough marketing mumbo jumbo. Let’s get back to figuring out who is going to be the third boat in the grand final sail off for $1 million next month. When we left off yesterday, New Zealand had sorted out its starting problem and locked in the second spot, joining Australia – who has dominated the entire season.
Here is the event by event place graph again.
While New Zealand was crushing it in events 3 and 4 in Plymouth and Copenhagen, France was getting its program sorted out. France finished 2nd in Copenhagen, and then 4th in their home event in Saint-Tropez, and then won the 6th event in Cadiz – taking the 3rd place overall spot away from Great Britain. GBR got it back briefly at event 8 in Singapore, but as it stands now, FRA is ahead of GBR by 1 point.
Among the nine helmsmen in SailGP, there are 8 Olympic medals and 31 world titles. Ben Ainslie from team GBR has 5 of the Olympic medals and 11 of the world titles. Quentin Delapierre from France has none. But when the wind is up, the 30 year old Frenchman can really make his boat go fast. In Cadiz it was windy and wavy, and he won the event. In Sydney it was windy and stormy, he won every race. In Singapore, with very light winds, Quentin finished 8th.
Last month in Christchurch New Zealand we saw a preview of what is to come. Going into the event, France had 63 points and Great Britain had 61. It’s one point per place, so when it came to the last race, Ben showed his strategy when he tried to control Quinten at the start and pushed them both back in the race. It didn’t matter if they were in the front of the fleet or back, Ben knew that if he finished one boat ahead, he would get one more point.
Here Ben is starting in a controlling position below the French. Quentin used his speed to wriggle out of it and rounded the first mark ahead. Then Ben got the lead back half way down the next leg and held onto it to the finish, gaining one more point than the French. So going into San Francisco, France/Quinten have 69 points and Great Britain/Ben have 68. Now if Ben beats Quinten it will create a tie and the tie breaker will be who was ahead of whom in the last race. Here is a mark by mark look back at FRA v GBR for all of season 3:
This fight has been going on for a while!
So in the first five fleet races in the San Francisco event there will be all kinds of not important stuff going on with the other seven boats, and a fight to the death between the most decorated sailor in sailing and a super speedy upstart youngster from France. Quinten was just 4 years old when Ben won is first Olympic medal in 1996.
It is going to be great watching for both the deep audience and the wide audience. And on the San Francisco cityfront, it is almost certainly going to be windy. Here are the wind numbers from Anita Rock, right on the course by the marina district on the San Francisco city front.
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I am part of the “wide” market. I appreciate the updates and explanations, Jay. I’ll be watching the race in San Francisco. Heck, maybe I’ll fly down and watch in-person.