First it was a tequila brand. Or a lifestyle line. Then something wellness-adjacent involving adaptogens. After that came a philanthropy that’s helping someone, somewhere, probably. But for the modern star—whether you were once the fastest, funniest, or most followed in the world—those moves are now baseline.
Want to show you’ve really made it? Buy a team.
Not a football team. Definitely not a pickleball league. A racing team. One with your name on the hull of a 50-knot, all-electric boat that skims across the most beautiful harbors in the world in total silence.
That, at least, is the pitch behind the E1 Series, a new powerboat championship that’s quickly becoming the latest status symbol among members of the 1 percent.
The league was founded by Rodi Basso, an Italian former Ferrari and Formula One engineer who also worked at NASA, and Alejandro Agag, the Spanish entrepreneur behind Formula E (Formula One for electric cars), in 2020. Their idea was simple: make sustainability so glamorous that the world’s most influential people might actually get interested.
It worked. Tom Brady has a team. So does Rafael Nadal, as well as Will Smith, Steve Aoki, Marc Anthony, and LeBron James. Yet this is more than a vanity project. The boats are identical, the racing is real, and the mission—to push marine-sport culture into a cleaner, faster, more sustainable future—is worthy. Basso has said the league is about electrifying water mobility for future generations. In other words, yes, there’s a party. But there’s also a point.
The fifth of seven yearly E1 races made its Riviera debut last week with exactly the kind of splash you’d expect—custom team liveries, terrace-side cocktails, and so forth. Naturally, all of this took place at the Yacht Club de Monaco, an exclusive seaside venue under the patronage of Prince Albert II.
It’s a place where billionaires toast to the future while quietly reminding you who owns it—a sort of ground zero for the global-ambition-industrial complex. And for those who’ve already dominated one E1 arena—whether in Jeddah, Croatia, Venice, or Qatar—the series offers something increasingly rare: a fresh playing field.
Optics, naturally, are part of the sport. A rare Rolex wasn’t showing off, it was just showing up. Hermès Oran sandals passed as pool slides, and Birkins and Kellys were so common they practically had assigned seating.
Bombay Sapphire, the official gin sponsor, anchored the weekend with its Step Into the Blue campaign, which could not have been more on-brand if it tried. Its terrace bar at the yacht club became the unofficial headquarters, where sparkling lemon cocktails were poured from sapphire-colored bottles in full view of the harbor. Occasionally, a team owner would make the rounds in branded merchandise.
Naturally, there was drama. Nadal’s boat collided with another vessel just a day before the race. (Even his boats, it seems, are injury-prone.) And during the race itself, Smith’s team was leading its heat when the boat stalled just before the finish line. Indian cricketer Virat Kohli’s team ended up winning, while Brady’s team remains in the overall lead.
But no one came to Monaco for the scoreboard. They came for the backdrop, and for the idea that owning a team in an emerging league is the new private island. When you’ve already won the Super Bowl or headlined Coachella or redefined modern tennis, competition doesn’t end, it just gets rebranded.
E1 is now a global circuit, racing across four continents, with its finale set for Miami in early November. That Florida stop promises to be bigger, splashier, and even more star-studded.
For the owners, E1’s appeal lies in its lack of legacy infrastructure. There’s no 150-year-old governing body. No dusty rules committee. The series offers an opportunity to be the architect of something.
And for the rest of us? It’s a glimpse at what legacy looks like now: futuristic, seaworthy, and ideally served over ice with a Bombay Sapphire sparkling lemon cocktail.
Jennifer Noyes is the Chief Merchant at AIR MAIL’s shop vertical, AIR SUPPLY
