Bringing sailing to new audiences – Mike Buckley, United States SailGP Team

This transcript has been transcribed by Riverside.fm, no edits (please excuse any errors)

Sean Callanan (00:01.559)
Very happy to welcome Mike Buckley. He's the co-owner and CEO of the US SailGP team. Mike, welcome to the podcast.

Mike Buckley (00:09.915)
Hey, thanks for having me, Sean. Really excited to chat with you today.

Sean Callanan (00:14.07)
Not a problem at all. I always start by asking people how they got their start in the world of sports business. I'll ask you the same thing. How'd you get your start in the world of sport and sports business, but also sailing?

Mike Buckley (00:25.989)
Yeah, I think on the sailing side, kind of got into it probably not the normal way growing up in it. I got to go to boarding school with what I thought was going to be maybe the start of my hockey or football career. And turned out I wasn't very good at either of those. And that school, Tabor Academy, had an amazing sailing team.

And I kind of saw the kids that did it and they walked around and talked about how great it was and it made me want to, you know, want to try it. And after my freshman year high school, I signed up for some rec sailing classes and, and really fell in love with it. And it's, it's given me, you know, gave me an education and it's shown me the world. And as I got older in my, you know, kind of professional competing career, I

wanted to take a step into the management side, the ownership side. It's really hard to scale yourself as an athlete. And that's a scary thing as you get older in your career. And I watched some of these other athletes, really famous athletes like LeBron James and all the different businesses he's created and what he's doing off the court and the communities and his world of business. yeah, SailGP was being built kind of

you know, on the side and became undeniable not to pay attention to. And yeah, guess kind of a lot of my dreams came true November, 2023 when Ryan and I acquired the team.

Sean Callanan (01:59.598)
So yeah, so to go a little bit back before that, pre-SailGP, you were sailing and sort of working your way, I guess, up the ranks and sailing around the world. How do you sustain that? How do you become an athlete in that space and support what you wanna do?

Mike Buckley (02:19.345)
Yeah, I think like anything else, it's a grind, right? If you want to get to the top of whatever it is, you know, you're doing, you got to be all in. And I spent, I don't know, 15 years traveling the world, sailing two to 250, maybe some years, almost 300 days a year. And it's a grind. And, you know, you're never satisfied with your results and whether you win or…

you get your butt kicked, you always want to get back to it the next day and try to improve. I've always enjoyed working and I love competing and sailing has been my outlet to do that. I feel very, very fortunate to have been part of lot of really great teams and met a lot of fantastic people along the way, people that I would have never crossed paths with, never been in a room with if it wasn't for the sport of sailing.

But yeah, this is kind of a turn in my career and to be around the very best sailors in the world and SailGP and a lot of great minds and to be able to buy a thing from Larry Ellison is something I'll never forget as long as I live.

Sean Callanan (03:37.55)
So talking about that thing, SailGP, for those who don't know, founded in 2019. I my experience, my, I guess, knowledge of sailing comes from way back when America's Cup as an Australia, Australia 2, the Wink Hill. And for those who don't know that, you know, that backstory and the history of sailing, you know, check it out. Untold is a really good doco on Netflix. It sort of tells that, and I remember that as a…

as a young kid, our prime minister actually told everyone to take the day off when in Australia. So like there's connection to the sport, but explain, how do you go about explaining to people who might be in sailing or not even in sailing or in the world of sport what sail GP is?

Mike Buckley (04:20.357)
Yeah, you it's funny you bring that up. I did some media yesterday with Barstool and they brought up the same thing, right? And where the America's Cup was in the 80s and it was mainstream, right? What Dennis Connor did for the sport of sailing has really never been seen before. And he brought a whole country here in America together around a small little sport like sailing. What the America's Cup

Sean Callanan (04:36.526)
Mmm.

Mike Buckley (04:50.129)
kind of has lacked is, you know, consistency, right? what's, what's really unique and beautiful about the America's Cup is when you win, you control all the rules for the next one. that makes it really hard, to be a challenger and because you don't know what's going on, right? It makes it really hard to go out and find sponsors. you know, only a few teams have been, have been successful with that, right? Grant Dalton and team New Zealand have been very successful.

But a lot of the other teams struggle to get sponsorship because when you walk into a CMO's office, the first thing they say to you is, where's the race going to be? And when you respond, I don't know, they look at you like you have 10 heads. Then they ask you, when's the race going to be? And you say, well, I don't know that either. And then they look at you and say, well, how did you get this meeting with me? And I think Larry Ellison and Russell Coots went through that very successfully. And I think

Sean Callanan (05:34.829)
Yeah.

Mike Buckley (05:49.105)
You know, they saw that the writing was on the wall that we needed to make our sport to get to the next level. It needs to be commercially sustainable. It needs to be always on like every other sports league in the world. Um, and, uh, yeah, in 2019, they, they, they brought that to fruition. And, um, you know, now when you're able to walk into a CMO's office, they might not say yes to you right away to a sponsorship deal, but at least you can say we have 14 races around the world, you know, from.

Abu Dhabi to New York City to Sydney, Auckland and all over Europe. Here's where it's going to be. Here are the teams. You know, you at least have a chance, right? you know, SailGP brings sailing closer to the fans. also, you know, it also brings the fans closer to sailing, right? Which is a win for all of us. And who doesn't like to go to a waterfront city anywhere in the world?

and be around the ocean, the sun hopefully, some nice wind, good temps and see foiling catamarans ripping around at 60 miles an hour.

Sean Callanan (06:56.102)
absolutely. And I think the question I sort of want to view like getting into that point of getting into ownership and, you know, not moving away from being an athlete, you still you're still on the boat. But was that structure of, you know, dedicated races, different parts of the world having that assurity of, you know, is now commercially viable sport? Was that something that, you know, when you went out to find investors and look to have people invest in the sport? Was that did that make that pitch?

easier even though it was still a relatively new idea to a lot of people you were pitching to.

Mike Buckley (07:29.649)
Yeah, I mean, I, you know, it's been well documented. I, you know, kind of failed at the America's Cup, you know, twice, uh, trying to get there. Uh, you know, but I learned a ton along the way, uh, in the, you know, I spent a lot of time thinking about and focused on the commercial side of, of the America's Cup and, trying to put a team and compete. And, you know, it's been, it's been a one 80, uh, with, with what we have, you know, at the us SailGP team and sell GP as a whole. Right. have.

I just spoke to James Vowles, the principal of Williams, and we kind of talked about the introduction of the salary cap, or the spend cap rather, in Formula One. We have the same thing in SaleGP. And what that created was investable businesses, both for teams in Formula One and SaleGP teams. And when you can just dump as much money as humanly possible at something, someday some…

you know, the person who controls that spend wakes up and says, what the heck are we doing? We spent how much? you know, I I'm not interested in this anymore. and so it's, it's unique in sport to have a spend cap. and so, yeah, we went about it very differently in the America's Cup, which, which I love and have enormous amount of respect for. It's, it's very much focused on patronage for most of the teams, you know, a wealthy individual who loves sailing and, and, you know, wants to.

put some money behind it and go try to win. SaleGP is predominantly corporately funded and will eventually be 100 % corporately funded. there's no expiration date, right? The US SaleGP team will go on far beyond my lifetime, right? And the New York Knicks at the end of the season.

you know, they don't shut off, right? They will start playing at the end, you know, at the beginning of next season. And that's what SaleGP has brought. And I think you see that from the proof is kind of in the, in the pudding, I guess they say, with, with our investor group, right? We were able to bring private equity in on our transaction. You know, that's a first, right? Because it's an investable business. And what's unique about it is, you know, you know that you have a $10 million spend cap. And, you know,

Mike Buckley (09:50.981)
we know that we can get there with sponsorship. so everything above that 10 million comes back to the investors and the owners. And we also like that there's an enormous amount of fan engagement and there's a rev share on TV broadcast. And currently that rev is zero. And so we like that gap is opportunity. And as soon as some of those TV deals start to get renewed and they

you know, with our fan engagement on TV, all of a sudden there's going to be real revenue and so investors like that as well.

Sean Callanan (10:28.726)
And from that investor base, one, there's always that take of there's good money and then there's, and what comes with that money. Have you also been looking at like who are those investors, whether they be private capital firms or people that want to get into sports ownership and team ownership, and they bring a, I guess, a set of skills and knowledge that's potentially just as valuable as the check that they're handing over.

Mike Buckley (10:58.289)
Yeah, I'll tell you what, I went into a meeting six years ago with McKinsey and Company and when I left, they said to me, let's show the world that diversity is a competitive advantage. And I'd never heard it said like that. And I use it every week now. And diversity can mean as many things as you want it to mean. It doesn't need to be politically charged or anything like that, right? And the way that I think about it is, you know, it's a competitive advantage to bring a bunch of people together.

that think differently, that look differently, that are different, right? That's how you're going to get a good product. You know, it's one thing if, if, know, if you want to put your best friends in a box and you all think alike, you know, and you all yes each other to death, you're going to have a really average product. But you know, what, what Ryan and I have been able to assemble, you know, very lucky to be able to do this is, you know, a lot of people that bring different skills, right? Avenue Capital.

You know, they, own 15 sports properties, right? They've due diligence over a thousand teams and leagues around the world. So we get the knowledge of, you know, what's market, what's not, you know, what are they doing in NASCAR? What are they doing in soccer? What are they doing in golf? you know, not only what are they doing in the PGA tour, but what are they doing in TGL two totally different golf properties and how we can, you know, learn from what they're doing. you know, and then.

You know, we have a number of celebrities, right? And you know, what Issa Rae is doing, you know, in Hollywood and with her production companies and her advertising agencies. How can we learn from that? How can we, you know, capitalize on what she's doing? We have a phenomenal board with Lindsey Vonn and DJ Khaled, right? I mean, what Lindsey's done on a mountain around the world, you know, she's obviously one of the best of all time at what she does.

you know, we can learn from her, you know, how, how, you know, she's prepared her body and her mind competing. but also, you know, she's probably, you know, I don't know what the exact percentages, but I'm going to guess it's a very large number of the reason that skiing is popular in America, right? She, made skiing a mainstream thing. and, so yeah, I mean, there's kind of can go down the list. you know,

Mike Buckley (13:21.913)
Ryan, my partner, he wrote the code that is on every one of our phones in the Uber app. So you start to have access to all these really brilliant people that think differently. And now all of sudden you can start to push some boundaries. And yeah, it's awesome.

Sean Callanan (13:45.186)
So we're talking about your life and your current life outside the boat, but you're still racing. Tell us a little bit more about what your role is on the boat.

Mike Buckley (13:56.369)
Yeah, you know, and so I guess when we, when we, when we acquired the team, you know, we, wanted to be able to, I wanted to be able to have my hands on, how, how the team operates, right? Like the inner workings of, of, of a, SailGP team. And I thought, you know, the best way to do that is from the inside. and, and, you know, my sailing career is, not going to last forever. It's, it's coming to the end.

but when I get off the boat, I wanted to be able to, you know, from experience, understand how important the communication is, how important the teamwork is, how important the timing is, you know, the feel and things like that. So that when you're behind, you know, on the pit wall and you've got a headset on, you know, you can, you can essentially be in their shoes, and, communicate as such, you know, on the boat, I I'm the strategist and what that is, you know, I

essentially call the race to the rest of the team and, you know, kind of navigate our F50 through traffic, you know, other F50s, look for the most amount of wind that we can kind of, you know, head towards and hopefully go faster than the other boats. And then in all the maneuvers, there's typically two people required for each roll in the maneuver because the boat is so wide as people run to the other side when you turn from one tack to the other.

Somebody has to drive and so there's two steering wheels There's two flight controller modules and you know, there's a flight controller module on the wheel as well. And so it's we kind of talked about it like an orchestra when When you know Taylor and I decide that we're gonna turn, know There's a there's a call that goes out standby or whatever and that alerts everybody to go to their you know next thing I'll run to the other side first We turn and then I drive

Taylor runs across, know, and you kind of verbally and literally hand off your role to, you know, kind of your partner, in, in, know, whichever kind of area of the boat. So, you'll hear on the comms, I'll say my wheel. That means I'm, know, I'm driving and that's Taylor's cue to run across the boat. And then he'll say my wheel and he'll say my rake, which is the, basically a flight control, term.

Sean Callanan (16:22.862)
Okay, yep.

Mike Buckley (16:23.757)
And when he says that, then Hans knows that he can take his hands off the flight controller and run to the other side. I think there's like 37 functions that happen in one second, something like that, you know, in the course of the maneuvers. So you can imagine that's, it's very complex and we're still learning, you know, how to do it properly. But yeah, it's a lot of fun.

Sean Callanan (16:49.6)
It's it sounds like it must make your race weekends. We're recording this just before a race in New York must make your race weekends. action packed both like in the boat and then also outside the boat, whether it be a talking to sponsors and partners and, and checking in with investors. What does your race weekend look like?

Mike Buckley (17:11.825)
my race weekends are probably in kind of big markets or, you know, I don't know, 18 to 20 hours, you know, a day. but it's, you know, I always, I always think about my mom worked three jobs when I was a kid, for most of my life. She never complained. I never heard her complain one time. I never saw her take a day off. I never saw her feel sorry for herself.

Sean Callanan (17:31.875)
Mm-hmm.

Mike Buckley (17:39.937)
And, you know, she worked a lot of jobs that were, you know, a lot harder and a lot dirtier than what I do. so, you know, I kind of always come back to, when you love what you do, it's, it's not work. yeah, it's like, it's a privilege. get to go and race an F 50 during the day. and then, you know, at night I get the opportunity to go to dinner or whatever it may be with, you know, investors or, or partners or.

potential partners, you know, like I get to do this this podcast with you like that's that's a privilege there's there's there's there's not a lot of people in the world that get to get to do what we get to do and and I I try to never lose sight of that and you know, I usually wait till monday or tuesday to be absolutely wiped. but the weekends, you know, they fly by

Sean Callanan (18:34.062)
Absolutely. I mean, we've had a few guests on, especially around those major tournaments, whether it's be an Australian Open, two weeks of solid tennis or Olympics. And one of the phrases or even a hashtag is sleep is for the week. Like just for those three or four days of that two weeks, you just power through. Like you said, it's a grind, but it is absolute privilege.

Mike Buckley (18:52.933)
Yeah, I don't want to come off as like I'm some like crazy tough guy. I'm not. I'm not any tougher than anyone else, I don't feel tired at race weeks, right? It's just like the kind of just natural adrenaline is just, yeah, it's exciting. Every day is a little bit different and you're always going to wake up and there's going to be some new problem. mean, that's the…

biggest misconception in kind of owning your own business. You get to make your own schedule and this, that, and the other. That's about the most untrue statement ever. You wake up and there's just some new thing and there's no one to deal with it but you, But that's what makes it exciting.

Sean Callanan (19:36.846)
We've already sort of touched on that there are a lot of similarities with Formula One with SaleGP, know, the speed, the global races, the growing popularity, and you've already mentioned the cost cap and how it's helped make it sustainable in that, and then you don't have that race to the bottom with, you know, owners spending more money and making it hard business. But it also must make your day-to-day business hard because you've got to watch every dollar that goes out the door and make decisions on that. How is that?

I guess, you know, the cost cap sort of, I guess sharpen your focus on every cost that goes out the door.

Mike Buckley (20:13.871)
Yeah, well, every dollar matters. And you have to be, you know, really careful about how you spend money. You know, you have to be really careful with how you manage expectations of, you know, the different departments on our team and the people that work for us. You know, everybody wants to spend money in, you know, in their area, right? Like as, as you would expect, you know, our head coach Evan wants to, you know,

put money towards performance and off season training and you know, our head of hospitality, Alta, she wants to put money towards making sure our hospitality looks premium. So our partners are, you know, and you have to balance and there's no, there's no right answer, right? We need our performance to increase. That's a fact. But we also need happy and, and, you know, more commercial partners, right? know, so ideally

Ideally everything's happening kind of at the same time. But yeah, it's tough and you have to be willing to say no, we can't spend money on that. And sometimes that's a hard pill to swallow for everybody. the nice thing is everybody knows we have a cap, We kind of split our business in two, essentially. We've got the sailing and kind of then the marketing and entertainment side of our business.

everybody knows that we have a $10 million spend cap and that's the deal.

Sean Callanan (21:46.818)
And it also must, I guess, mean, sport is known for creating a lot with a little and producing their performance with it, with a limited resource. must be really, you know, people must both value it, but also really strive for it to stretch that dollar further, you know, over deliver with what they've got and must really, I guess, help the team from a performance point of view, whether it be in the boat, but also outside the boat.

Mike Buckley (21:48.336)
you

Mike Buckley (22:12.623)
Yeah, you know, again, it's it's really, really hard to run our business on $10 million and have the people so you you know, the people that you surround yourself with and the people that work for, you know, any brand in the world are the most important part of, you know, the whole thing. They're the heartbeat. They're there. We can't operate without our people. And you have to find people that believe in your vision that are willing to kind of

You know kind of come in Temporarily work for less You know you've got to find people in their life cycle that are you know kind of just on the come-up You know you can't go out and find the the most seasoned You know whatever position it is right because there there's a there has to be some give-and-take and I was I'm a New England Patriots football fan and I have been for a long long time and

when they were in their heyday with Tom Brady and Bill Belichick, they were notorious for spreading the money across all the players. They had very few superstars. Tom Brady played for less than, I don't know the exact number, I think substantially less than any of the quarterbacks that were remotely in the top group. That money was able to be spread around to other players.

They didn't have a ton of big name players, right? I mean, there were years where they're receivers. They won a Superbowl or Troy Brown was playing receiver and playing defense, right? And, you know, and then, you you look at other teams and they've, they've given all their money to their quarterback or whoever, and they, can't afford any other players. And that's tough to win. You know, I don't know what the perfect mix is, but that's kind of what I think about.

Sean Callanan (24:06.2)
But also long-term, I mean, success of SaleGP and the league overall. And like you said, new revenues coming in, whether they be from broadcast deals and league sponsorships and more interest, then hopefully the cost cap will be adjusted as the league and the sport grows.

Mike Buckley (24:28.249)
Yeah, again, I think the cost cap is in there so that everybody's competing kind of on a similar playing field. And I think, so that all the teams are commercially sustainable and hopefully profitable. And I think once you see that, mean, the natural thing to do would be to increase. But I don't think we're in a rush to do that. From a team perspective, we don't really have a say.

one twelfth of a say or one thirteenth of the league as well. But even if it was up to us, I'm not sure we'd want to increase it yet. We want to see ourselves and all the teams be as prosperous as possible and grow kind of at the right pace.

Sean Callanan (25:14.126)
Absolutely. Well, one of the areas we work in with sports is helping develop fan base, especially via digital and social. SaleGP, you know, what are you guys doing in conjunction with SaleGP to help grow and develop that fan base?

Mike Buckley (25:15.761)
Thank

Mike Buckley (25:31.365)
Yeah, I mean, you know, there's no magic answer. You've got to, you know, you have to have a compelling value proposition, right? There's a, there's kind of a misconception that the fans will just show up, right? There needs to be some value exchanged, right? Whether that's, you know, kind of a, that's like a souvenir or whether that's like an emotional connection, right? It's still some level of a value, you know, something being exchanged, right? Whether

Fans typically either love you or hate you. Either one is a fan. You obviously would rather the love than the hate. But some of the areas that I think that we'll see a lot of growth in the next few years is storytelling around athletes, around key people. What we've seen happen with Formula One is, with Drive to Survive, at least here in the United States,

the introduction to the personalities behind Formula One, whether that be Toto or Christian or Zack or, you know, Daniel Ricardo's smile or Max's killer instinct and, you know, what Lewis is doing on and off the track, right? All those things, most Americans had no clue about Formula One, right? And I know it's been a thing overseas, but here it really never was. And now all of a sudden, you know, everybody, it doesn't matter how young, how old.

man, woman, whatever, Formula One is kind of top of mind. So we've, one area that we've kind of, know, kind of been the first into is on the fan engagement side. We did a deal with Fan Capital, which is, you know, essentially a fan engagement agency. So there, you know, they work with us to build an app and build storytelling around our people and

you know, kind of ensure that we're always on telling a story before we are kind of randomly posting things. And now we're trying to weave a story, a good, bad, or in between, you know, every day of the week. And our metrics have done a 180 since we brought them on, right? You know, things like sweepstakes and giveaways and, you know, capturing first party data. You know, all of this was kind of a bootstrap before, and now we're doing it professionally. And, you know, I don't know if you've

Mike Buckley (28:00.015)
You've watched what they did with Williams F1, but they took Williams F1 from having the most amount of fans, because Williams has been around forever, but also the least engaged fans on the grid. In 12 or 14 months, they went from last in fan engagement to third in fan engagement. That's a huge jump. And what that did was open the door for new partners. Suddenly, they had one paying partner.

two years ago, now they have 14 or 15, including a title. So fan engagement is a major aspect to bringing on new partners.

Sean Callanan (28:48.737)
Absolutely. mean, we've you know, those in sport and myself included would have seen, you know, some of those social clips, one showing the boat showing the speed. But then I think that that helmet off thing, which is a phrase that I use in the NFL to sort of say, Hey, take the helmet off so people can learn, learn who the players are. I think it's a definite trend across cross sports. And once you start, you know, start following the different players in the sport and understanding a bit of the behind the scenes stuff, it sort of gets you a bit more in

Mike Buckley (28:49.904)
Ahem.

Sean Callanan (29:17.166)
more invested. So you're starting to draw fans in from a social content and storytelling point of view. And you sort of talked about, watching the sport, is there a misconception that you can't watch a sail GP race? it's out there in the bay or what's a race weekend like for fans?

Mike Buckley (29:36.741)
Well, again, what I started with is, know, SailGP has brought the racing close to the fans, the fans close to the racing, you know, so now when people come to a race, you know, whether you're in the grandstands, whether you're kind of in standing room only, or whether you're in the hospitality or out on a power boat or sailboat, you're right in it, right? You're in some of the venues. It's very easy for us to crash into the

you know, the hospitality or the land that's kind of holding the hospitality or the grand stands up. and you know, each venue is different and I, and I think time will tell, but I'd like to see, and I think this will happen authentically, but I'd like to see each venue kind of have its own identity, right? you know, I like to think about the Kentucky Derby or art Basel or the super bowl. you know, like people go,

to these big events, Ultra Music Festival, else? Wonderland or whatever the big DJ thing is in Europe. A lot of the time, it just becomes an excuse to get a bunch of people together, right? And each one of them has its own identity. I'd love to see Saint-Tropez be the last super yacht event of the Mediterranean super yacht season, right? Where all the super yachts come.

September, October before they head to the Middle East or the Caribbean and stop to watch the Sail GP race, right? You're never going to get a hundred thousand people there. The town is too small, but you could get 200 megawatts or 300 megawatts and it could be like St. Barts New Year's Eve. I think New York can be that here in New York, a lot of people go out to the Hamptons for the summer in a week or two, but the spring is so beautiful in New York City.

in New York Grand Prix can be that like first weekend of summer before kind of you know, the who's who disperses to the Hamptons and you know, so I think you could kind of You know Auckland, you know was Just you know, the fandom there is like nothing, you know, any of us have ever seen before in our sport, right? It's and you you probably know what that looks like and

Mike Buckley (31:58.641)
You you go out to dinner, people want to take photos with you. It's just Auckland, New Zealand, sailing is in their blood. So that should be like a very sailing, racing forward identity, right? With mass fandom. Australia is not too far off of that. So I think the game day experience is a little bit different for each venue, but I'd love to see those identities start to take shape so that

People can kind of, you know, back to what we started with, with the America's Cup versus this, people can put our races on their calendar, uh, and kind of know, Oh, you know, first weekend in June, like, yeah, you're going to say, Oh, GP next year. Like, yeah, that was awesome. Right. You know, that's, that's where I'd love to, you know, get the, get the people in their big hats, like the Kentucky Derby, whatever the thing is. Right. Um, and it's just an excuse to get a bunch of people together and have fun.

Sean Callanan (32:52.706)
Yeah.

And it becomes that fan escalator piece. mean, that the eventization of sport in big events, like you said, like you want people to be putting on their calendar and saying, yes, I'll be in Sydney next year or next year, I'm going to go over to Auckland because it's close by or, but sort of set their calendar around it. Like, I know what the experience is. And then from that, you go, I'm going to tune into what's happening in New York, even though it's on the other side of the world. And that's the, I guess the global opportunity you have to make that real strong connection with someone in an, at an event.

Mike Buckley (33:00.634)
Ahem.

Sean Callanan (33:26.882)
and sort of lock them in and become one of those fans that love you and are cheering or cheering against other teams and sort of get some of that rivalry that you might know, you know, as a Patriots fan, that must be really, it must be really exciting.

Mike Buckley (33:37.465)
Yeah.

Mike Buckley (33:41.967)
Yeah, no, it is. and, you know, I mean, right now the rivalries are starting to, you know, pick up in, in SailGP and, know, think forever, a lot of sailors have kind of been trained, you know, a lot of people we, know, outside of SailGP have worked for high net worth individuals racing their boats or America's Cup or whatever it is. And, know, kind of you're told to just, you know, just kind of lay low, right? Don't make a

Don't make a scene or whatever. And I think don't rock the boat, you know? And now we need some more people rocking the boat, right? And you look back to what the legendary America's Cup drivers, you know, they rocked the boat back then, right? Russell rocked the boat, know, Dennis rocked the boat, right? All these people rocked the boat and that was a big part of their personalities and that was before social media, right?

Sean Callanan (34:14.328)
Don't rock the boat, maybe?

Sean Callanan (34:40.472)
Yeah.

Mike Buckley (34:42.169)
they were larger than life. And I think the last 30 years, we kind of got away from that. now we need the people that some people love, people that hate. We need the boring person. We need the funny person. We need the whatever it is, but make a thing out of it.

Sean Callanan (35:04.462)
Absolutely. And I think, you know, we talk a lot about fan metrics of, know, how many fans you're growing and what you've got on social and who's viewing one of the fan fan metrics I like are sort of the avidity of fandom is, you know, when you come up and you see a fan that's it's got a tattoo of your team logo on it, you know, which, you know, you know, there's lots of fans with, you know, Pat's fans with tattoos and it's like, it shows the level of fandom there at the top of that fan escalator, you've got them, got them for life. So maybe that's another metric you put on the board with.

you know, more people coming up and say, I've got a USA SailGP tattoo, is it?

Mike Buckley (35:36.185)
I went to a PBR event at Madison Square Garden. PBR is Professional Bull Riding League. And Avenue Capital owns the New York Mavericks team. And I got to go into the team hotel and hang out with the team and all that. had an activation they were doing was they were doing live tattoos in the hotel, right?

to what you're saying, right? The fandom in PBR is just unreal, right? So yeah, when people are willing to, you know, take a chance on a lifelong tattoo for you, that's when you know you've made it, I guess.

Sean Callanan (36:16.46)
Yeah, had Stephanie Rogers from the Las Vegas Knights when they were in their early form, they had the same thing, a tattoo activation, which says, hey, fans, you're gonna lock in you with us. And it's a nice way to sort of get that, you know, not just social proof, actual proof. Well, Mike, really do appreciate you.

Mike Buckley (36:26.341)
Yeah.

Mike Buckley (36:32.143)
Maybe we should set up a free tattoo parlor in our New York race. See if we can get any takers. That could be a good fan engagement in itself.

Sean Callanan (36:41.134)
Well.

Sean Callanan (36:44.792)
Well, I look forward to seeing the photos if it does come through. I to get to the SportsGeek Closing Five. I do appreciate that. I'm still a clean skin. I think I will remain a clean skin. Tattoos are my thing. And there's probably a few other teams that I've been following for most of my life that are probably in front of the queue right now. I want to get to the SportsGeek Closing Five. Mike, do you remember the first sports event you ever attended?

Mike Buckley (36:48.805)
Will you go, will you go, would you go first?

Mike Buckley (37:05.776)
Fair enough.

Mike Buckley (37:12.325)
Yeah, probably a Boston Red Sox game.

Sean Callanan (37:16.43)
at Fenway, a beautiful place to watch a game of baseball.

Mike Buckley (37:19.825)
At Fenway, yep. When tickets were like, I don't know, five, $10 for a grandstand seat.

Sean Callanan (37:24.43)
Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You would have been a lot of different sports events. Do you have a favorite favorite food memory or go to food at a sports event?

Mike Buckley (37:38.929)
Go to food. mean, there's nothing like a hot dog at Fenway Park. But nowadays, you go to MSG and you can get just about anything. You can have a five course meal there or the Barclays Center. I'm going to give you two answers. There's nothing like a hot dog at Fenway Park and there's nothing like a Carbone dinner.

at Barclay Center watching an NBA or WNBA game.

Sean Callanan (38:14.51)
Very good. It's exactly right. The food game definitely has changed over the years. Owning and running a global sports team like US SaleGP, you're obviously in constant contact with a bunch of people all the time. What's the first app you open in the morning?

Mike Buckley (38:34.417)
first app I open in the morning is my email. Second's probably my Instagram.

Sean Callanan (38:39.276)
Yeah, back to back to the big thing. It's always a case of, know, like you said, you're you're running your own schedule. I was like, no, don't run my own schedule. I run my business. It just throws stuff at me that I have to tackle every day. Is there is there someone that you follow? might be someone in the in the sale, sailing space or or might be someone that's currently one of your investors that the listeners should be following and why?

Mike Buckley (39:00.88)
Ahem.

Mike Buckley (39:11.249)
Hard to narrow it down to one person, but I love a comeback story. So I think people should follow what Lindsay's doing on the slopes, coming back after a knee replacement, getting on the podium at a World Cup event this year. A lot of people doubted her, but the lesson there is it doesn't matter what anybody thinks as long as you believe in yourself. So yeah, think that's going to be a hell of a story to watch coming up to the Olympics.

Sean Callanan (39:39.982)
Absolutely. If I quote Rudy Tomjanovic, never doubt the heart of a champion. I think if you're going to be following Lindsey Vonn in that comeback. Lastly, and you can answer this both personally and from a US SAIL GP, what social media platform is your MVP?

Mike Buckley (39:52.88)
you

Mike Buckley (40:03.971)
I would say, well, I think we have the largest presence on TikTok on the team side, not too far behind with Instagram. You know, I think for me, my most important platform is probably LinkedIn. I actually really enjoy kind of bouncing between athlete and executive and watching a lot of the stories and innovations that are going on and, you know, kind of big business around the world.

It took me a long time to get onto LinkedIn. I think I've only been on it like for a couple of years. But yeah, to be able to kind of, you know, have some sort of a back and forth and connection with what's going on in the world of business, world of sport, entertainment, you know, that's something I actually really enjoy.

Sean Callanan (40:50.612)
absolutely. mean, it is one that I give advice to athletes. Cause again, when you are an athlete, you do have the opportunity to meet a whole bunch of different people. You actually don't know where those connections will be, you know, two years, five years, 10 years. And so, you know, we don't use business cards anymore. Like LinkedIn is effectively our business card. So it is, it does become quite valuable. So yet let's connect. Cause you actually don't know how hard someone is following, you know, your story, what you're doing.

You might, you and I'm sure you've got that experience now where people are reaching out or connecting and say, Hey, Mike, I've been following your story for the last 18 months. I want to talk. You being able to share some of that on your LinkedIn is most likely pretty vital in building out your network.

Mike Buckley (41:34.865)
Yeah, it's fun. know, it's fun. And, you know, I think the biggest message on social media and sometimes I'm not great at this, but just consistency, right? When people see, you know, when people see you're consistently posting and telling a story, they're going to interact with you. If you're random, they're probably not. but it's, you know, it's not always easy, you know, to have, you want to feel like you want to have the right and the best content before you put it out there, but

Gary Vaynerchuk is one of our investors and he's a social media expert, star, whatever you want to call it. he's just consistency. DJ Khaled, same thing, consistency. It kills every time.

Sean Callanan (42:12.077)
Yeah.

Sean Callanan (42:19.532)
Yeah, that and like you said that being you because there is that pressure of athletes going, I'm looking at other athletes are doing amazing jobs or telling this or it's like, no, if you're just you, there's no lies there you can you know,

Mike Buckley (42:21.999)
Ahem.

Mike Buckley (42:29.775)
You gotta be, you gotta be authentic. You have to be authentic in, you know, really in everything you do, but anything publicly facing, if you're not authentic, you know, they're gonna see right through you.

Sean Callanan (42:42.41)
Absolutely. Well, Mike, thank you very much. You mentioned LinkedIn is, is that the best platform? I always ask the listeners to reach out to guests and say thank you if they enjoyed the episode as much as I did. Is LinkedIn the best place for people to reach out and say thanks?

Mike Buckley (42:55.217)
Yeah, sure. They can reach out on LinkedIn or Instagram. Instagram is just @Buckley, my last name. either or, yeah, I'd love to hear from you. And Sean, thank you for having me. I really, really enjoyed chatting with you today. We've to get you out to a race sometime soon.

Sean Callanan (43:10.958)
Yes, I do. I do want to. Tom Halls, who is one of the Sports Geek alumni now runs the Social for SailGP. So we're trying to make sure that maybe Sydney or Auckland, or if I'm in the same part of the world at some point, to catch up. But yeah, I'd love to check out a race in real life.

Mike Buckley (43:15.889)
you

Mike Buckley (43:28.933)
Yeah, would love that Tom Tom's the man. So yeah, we'd love to have would love to host you. Can't wait to get back down to your neck of the woods kind of first of the year.

Sean Callanan (43:38.894)
Cheers mate.

Mike Buckley (43:40.249)
Awesome talk soon bye bye.