American Magic buys Rockwool Denmark

Four weeks ago, when I interviewed Nicolai Sehested in the mixed zone after Saturday’s opening day of racing at SailGP Perth, I asked the Danish skipper a cheeky question. 

There he was, still dripping wet in his wetsuit and buoyancy aid, fresh off the water. He’s still buzzing from a high-adrenalin day of high-speed near misses on the Indian Ocean, and I say to him: “Some big announcements coming for the Danish team, when can we expect to hear something on that?”

Nicolai looks nonplussed: “Well, you tell me! I don’t know, should I take my gear off and give it to somebody else?” he says with half a grin and half a grimace, as he makes a show of beginning to rip off his buoyancy aid. 

I felt bad. It was one of the worst-kept secrets in the paddock, that American Magic was on the verge of buying Rockwool Racing. So was Nicolai really the last to know? Had I dropped a career-ending bomb on him, or was he doing a very good job of acting dumb?

I’d been a bit naughty, as my colleague Freddie Carr laughingly reminded me after we walked away from our interview session with the sailors. The next day at the mixed zone and Nicolai asked me with a wink and a grin if I was going on another fishing expedition. He’s such a good sport, and I didn’t push it a second time. Instead I thought I’d wait for things to play out in their official capacity.

So finally, on the eve of the SailGP Auckland weekend, we now know for sure that American Magic has indeed bought Rockwool Racing. According to American Magic’s CEO Mike Cazer, they have made a 100 per cent purchase of the Danish team for a fee of USD $60 million. 

This is interesting for a number of reasons. Firstly, why would an American organisation decide to buy a Danish team instead of establishing their own US-flagged entity? As SailGP’s managing director Andy Thompson explained to The Foil: “The rule is that there’s only one team from one nation. That’s been in the SailGP governance documents from day one. We did that originally to ensure that we have a representation across the world and ensure that we are in as many markets as we can be, in order to grow the sport.”

Thompson sees the American Magic acquisition as the latest vindication of a commercial model that is proving very attractive to a range of investors. “SailGP launched with a centrally-owned model for our teams. We had a clear plan to transition to private team ownership. Over our first five seasons we've made really strong progress with that.

“The demand for our teams right now continues to be at record levels. And as a result, the valuations for our teams are continuing to grow year on year. From a commercial perspective, we're now seeing our SailGP teams at least break even and in some cases become profitable, including some of those teams that have recently entered the league.”

While American Magic have become 100 per cent owners of the Danish team, Rockwool – a Copenhagen-based manufacturer of stone wool insulation for buildings – will remain as the title sponsor of the team through to 2032. Rockwool vice-president Mirella Vitale said the company had gone from initially becoming one of the very first SailGP sponsors in 2019 to finding themselves managing and operating the whole sports team. That was way beyond their skill set.

Vitale said that with the growing professionalisation of the league, the company felt increasingly out of their comfort zone. So Rockwool will continue to manage the corporate hospitality, the bit they feel they do well, while American Magic – the same organisation that ran two America’s Cup campaigns in 2021 and 2024 – will step in to manage the sports team. “We feel that American Magic will complement us,” she said.

But what of Nicolai Sehested’s faux-concern (or was it real?) that he might as well take off his buoyancy aid and pass the wheel over to someone else? Former America’s Cup skipper and American Magic’s president of sailing operations, Terry Hutchinson, was at pains to point out that they’re all about supporting the existing team of sailors at Rockwool Racing. 

Young American sailors must surely feel that there’s a new pathway into SailGP alongside the existing US team headed up by Mike Buckley and Taylor Canfield. However, Hutchinson was sounding very protective and loyal to the current Danish-assembled sailing crew headed up by Sehested.

Hutchinson pointed out he won’t even be leading the performance side of the campaign. Instead it will be longstanding coach, James Lyne, who sits in the coaches’ booth and oversees the performance of the team. British born but long-time resident in the USA, Lyne has been a close colleague of Hutchinson for many years, both through the decade of Quantum Racing competing on the TP52 circuit and also on the America’s Cup campaigns.

“I'll be there supporting James,” Hutchinson told The Foil, “and supporting the sailing side of the operation as well. James has such a wealth of experience and we've raced together and we have such a great relationship in that regard. It felt appropriate to have James take on this opportunity and help develop this group of talent that we have inside of our sailing team.

“And so it's really my role to facilitate that and to support James and the sailors where required, and then also to support Mike [Cazer] and the team on the business side of the operation and help promote SailGP because, you know, it's where we need to go. It is our future. It's a very exciting opportunity.”

From a sailor who has been as passionate and as dedicated as Terry Hutchinson, who’s been trying to win the America’s Cup for the best part of 30 years, that’s quite a statement.