SVENSK DRAKKLUBB

Could Sailing Be Bigger Than Football?

It's often said that sailing will never be a spectator sport, but Secretary General of the Danish Sailing Association, Dan Ibsen, begs to differ. "New technology is making it easier to convey the excitement of sailing competition in a way that has never been possible before," says Ibsen. "This year we wanted to see what was possible by bringing in live GPS tracking of boats and combining it with top quality event reporting at some of the big regattas taking place in Denmark this summer."
In 2008, with the backing of insurance company CODAN (part of Sun Alliance Group), the Danish Sailing Association bought 150 GPS tracking devices and signed up GPS tracking specialists TracTrac to cover the ISAF Youth World Championships in Aarhus. "With friends, family and sailing fans logging in from around the world, we had nearly 30,000 viewing sessions from 69 countries all over the world. We've already seen the huge appetite for live tracking of round-the-world sailing events like the Volvo Ocean Race and the Vendée Globe, and it seems there is just as much enthusiasm for following inshore racing events too."
Some of this year's world championship events eclipsed the 2008 Youth Worlds figures, with the Finn Gold Cup attracting 48,226 viewing sessions and the 470 World Championships a whopping 103,083 views. Even Ibsen is surprised at the level of interest from these events. "We thought the ISAF Youth Worlds figures were big, but this year's numbers are incredible. I think it's probably the result of an ongoing publicity programme that we ran throughout the summer with international press releases before and every day during all the regattas, and the combined effect of supporting a number of events across the season. This proves that there is a big potential in this for sailing, and I believe we are still only scratching the surface of what's possible in future."
Below is a list of the full viewing figures from each of the six events in Denmark this summer:

470 World Championship: 103,083
Finn Gold Cup: 48,226
Dragon Gold Cup: 39,570
Laser Radial European Championship: 23,045
Danish Open Match Race: 20.636
Contender World Championship: 17,958
EUROSAF European Match Racing Championship: 10,919
The total number of viewing sessions across these six events amounts to 263,437, with the average viewing session last 15 minutes.

To review all the tracked events, visit www.tractrac.com/?page=archive
Danish Sailing Association www.sejlsport.dk