The 2025 season of the Rolex SailGP Championship will be the most technologically advanced in sailing history as the league heads to the world’s epicenter of tech – San Francisco. The Oracle San Francisco Grand Prix this weekend (March 22-23) will bring fans closer to the action than ever before with a range of technological innovations powered by Oracle.
SailGP Chief Technology Officer Warren Jones said: “SailGP is truly at the forefront of the industry, putting fans and viewers at the heart of the action of our sport with the help of the most cutting-edge technology. By creating new fan experience touch points and by tapping into the latest AI developments, we are producing a best-in-class experience for the athletes in the boats, spectators on the shore and viewers at home.”
The F50 catamaran, powered by Oracle
Each of SailGP’s 12 international teams race in identical 50-foot foiling catamarans at over 60 miles per hour. A revolutionary concept in sail racing, the F50 is the culmination of more than 10 years of development in high-performance, foiling, multihull racing. Each F50 is equipped with 125 sensors that process more than 35K data points per second per boat.
SailGP uses Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) and Oracle Autonomous Database to stream real-time race metrics to athletes, coaches, umpires and even fans. Doing so reduces the league’s costs, carbon footprint and IT complexity while also providing a deeper understanding of team and athlete performance. In addition, the full democratization of the data allows each team to have complete access to one another’s data for post-race analysis. This creates a level playing field and means that the performance on the water – not unfair technological advantages – determines the winner of each race and event.
“Whether it is helping to accelerate the growth and success of the league with Oracle NetSuite or using OCI to deliver the powerful cloud and AI capabilities that make the racing more competitive and exciting, Oracle shares SailGP’s relentless drive to innovate and maximize performance,” said Mark Hura, executive vice president, Oracle. “This season is already shaping up to be one of the best yet, and we look forward to helping SailGP succeed on and off the water in 2025 and beyond.”
Advanced artificial intelligence (AI) integration
Four races into the 2025 season, SailGP is now at the forefront of using AI to help fans better understand the sport.
- AI-powered race marks on the water, developed by SailGP Technologies in partnership with ePropulsion, are fully electrically powered and operated via GPS to make for smoother, more sustainable events.
- AI-powered anti-crash technology warns teams of an impending crash, while Oracle Anomaly Detection enables teams to detect discrepancies and proactively manage the catamaran’s moving parts should an issue with a particular component arise before, during, or after a race.
- AI cameras on SailGP’s F50 catamarans analyze more than four billion data points to capture the most exciting content from each race.
- AI-powered analysis and diagnostics, processing billions of data points with OCI, enable SailGP’s catamaran engineering teams to identify parts that might be about to fail and preemptively replace them.
New and enhanced fan experiences
By leveraging artificial and virtual reality (AR and VR), SailGP is delivering a new era of enhanced fan experiences through its SailGP mobile app that fans can enjoy remotely or at the event.
- At Home: Fans can follow the VR experience by moving their device around the room and watching the race come to life through 360-degree viewing angles, on-water graphic overlaps, leaderboards and live catamaran tracking.
- At Venue: Fans can point their smartphones at the race to see live, interactive graphic overlays on the water, including race stats, catamaran tracking, leaderboards, and boundary lines. In addition, fans in the VIP guest areas at this season’s U.S. events will be provided with VR goggles to partake in the SailGP 360-immersive experience of being in an F50 catamaran.
Cutting-edge LiveLine broadcast remains best-in-class
LiveLine, SailGP’s proprietary, best-in-class AR overlay tool is helping existing and new fans better understand the on-screen action in races.
LiveLine is produced remotely from SailGP’s broadcast studio in London for SailGP’s broadcast partners in 212 international territories. It processes 53 billion data points that are transferred each race day via OCI.
OCI processes the data in real time to generate critical performance information for the teams, broadcasters, and viewers. This real-time analysis enables LiveLine to offer comprehensive graphical overlay options with two-centimeter accuracy that include geo-positioned race markers, boundaries, start-finish lines, performance data, and real-time positioning data.
Tickets selling fast
The Oracle San Francisco Sail Grand Prix marks the second of two back-to-back event weekends to kick off the U.S. slate of events for the 2025 season. Tickets for the Oracle San Francisco Grand Prix are still available and selling fast at SailGP.com/SanFrancisco. Tickets remain for Waterfront Grandstands ($80), Waterfront Premium ($200), and Bring Your Own
Boat (prices from $500).
