Like many Olympic sports, equestrian only finds itself in the mainstream every four years. The high-profile platform of the Olympic Games provides a combination of high-stakes competition, widespread media coverage, and the added spice of national pride that helps elevate the qualities that the sport’s supporters believe make it so exciting.
But outside of that window, equestrian struggles to make an impact on a consistent global scale. A fragmented calendar and commercial landscape make it difficult to generate mainstream appeal and for athletes to make a living from their talents. Even for dedicated aficionados, the lack of a coherent and unified structure makes it a notoriously difficult sport to follow throughout the year.
Former Los Angeles Dodgers owner and current Marseilles custodian Frank McCourt is among those who believe the equestrian art of showjumping has considerable untapped potential. More than a decade ago, he acquired a 50 per cent stake in the Global Champions Tour and co-founded the Miami Celtics Global Champions League team in 2017.
Although McCourt sold his stake in the Tour four years ago, his commitment to the sport remains undimmed, and his commercial ambitions have only grown. From next year, McCourt will bankroll the US$300 million Premier Jumping League (PJL), a team-based competition that will span elite locations across Europe, North America, and the Middle East.
The launch of the PJL risks adding a layer of fragmentation at the elite end of the sport, but McCourt is confident that his venture will go above and beyond what currently exists, offering significant commercial and experiential value for both fans and athletes alike. He is adamant that the unique combination of athletic spectacle, an affluent core audience, and soaring global demand for premium live event experiences can create a sustainable economic foundation and widen showjumping’s appeal far beyond its traditional demographic.
From Hakkasan to horses
This difference in strategic approach is immediately evident from the league’s executive hiring process. PJL chief executive Neil Moffitt and president and chief operating officer Nick McCabe have relatively little traditional background in sport, but they can count on hugely successful, high-stakes careers in global hospitality and entertainment. Both are previous chief executives of the Hakkasan Group, famous for its eponymous, high-end nightclub in Las Vegas, and have impressive, battle-tested backgrounds in managing large-scale events and luxury entertainment properties.
Nonetheless, Newcastle-born McCabe admits he was a little surprised to receive the initial phone call about the opportunity.
"I knew nothing about equestrian sport," McCabe admits in an interview with SportsPro. "My first reaction was, why am I getting the phone call about showjumping?"
Even so, McCabe was immediately excited about the prospect and how he could play a pivotal role in modernising the sport for a new generation.
"The idea was positioned as ‘here is a sport with a really sort of rich vein of content within it,’" he continues. "It has great storylines that were just not being exposed. And this is a sport with huge capital involved. There is massive amounts of money changing hands in the sale of horses and huge investments in stabling. Yet showjumping seems like one of the last remaining sports that hasn’t evolved in a meaningful way in the last couple of decades."
During his first six months in the role, McCabe attended a horse show every single weekend while simultaneously analysing the business practices of comparable properties such as the X Games, SailGP, UFC, and, of course, Formula One. In recent times, each of those major properties has enjoyed remarkable success in disrupting their respective markets, offering something entirely new to consumers, and successfully expanding far beyond their traditional core audiences.
"All those best practices just haven’t been adopted by showjumping," says McCabe. "Showjumping is incredible to watch, has great storylines, has gender and age parity, and is unique in that it’s about both humans and animals. In many ways, it’s incredibly inclusive, but nobody seems to really know about it. And, if anything, it felt like this sport was almost intentionally inaccessible. It was almost like those involved were like ‘Don’t watch, don’t come, don’t attend. It’s our thing, and we don’t want you to come and change it.’ Frank sees an incredible opportunity here. We’re taking a lot of what’s already there. We’re not trying to reinvent the sport by any means; we believe in where it is. But we want to simplify it, make it easier to understand, and make it more accessible."
How will the PJL’s franchise model work?
McCourt’s US$300 million investment guarantees the prize money for the next three years, giving the PJL a vital medium-term financial foundation to establish itself in the market and build a sustainable business model. The PJL also believes this period of financial certainty will derisk investments in individual teams, driving interest and increasing franchise valuations from day one. Teams will also be given much longer periods to forge their own independent brands and identify long-term commercial partners.
"That hopefully will bring to us much more serious investors with a long-term point of view on what the potential for this sport is, and they’ll see that Frank is personally committed to putting his own capital at risk to underwrite that investment," says McCabe. "Teams regularly finishing in the podium places will be profitable from day one, which is very unusual. Even a team that finishes last breaks even at very worst."
Under the league’s commercial framework, teams will be permitted to secure individual sponsorship deals and even sell naming rights. However, certain high-value categories will be strictly ringfenced for a centralised sponsorship programme, with the league hoping to secure major commitments from luxury brands that value showjumping’s affluent consumer audience but haven’t previously found the right platform to invest in the sport.
This centralized revenue will help sustain prize money well beyond season four. The PJL also argues that the model will prevent individual teams from competing against one another for the same sponsors, which would otherwise reduce the potential financial windfall for the collective.
Four teams will be sold each season to maintain commercial scarcity, with the remainder "leased out" to third-party operators who will then be granted the first option to purchase a franchise outright whenever it is formally put on the market.
The first team was sold to Jason McCarthy for US$50 million earlier this year, a striking sum that reflects rapidly rising interest in the sport among institutional investors and appears to vindicate the PJL’s bold strategy. By way of comparison, SailGP teams initially changed hands for US$5 million to US$10 million back in 2019, with the current valuation benchmark set at US$70 million following several successful seasons of global competition.
Each of the 16 planned teams will comprise five riders, three of which will compete in any single event. The PJL believes the promise of unprecedented financial rewards and a more coherent seasonal structure will ensure more regular, high-profile competition between the world’s best equestrian athletes than the current fragmented global calendar allows.
The PJL’s schedule has also been meticulously designed so that its events are located as near as possible to existing prestigious meets on the traditional showjumping calendar, significantly reducing travel burdens for riders and horses and making the league a far more attractive commitment. McCabe also claims that riders are likely to earn more from competing in the PJL than they would from the rest of the year combined, making it vastly easier to earn a comfortable living from the sport.
"We like to think that the economic reward warrants the commitment at that pretty low level, right?" he says. "We’re not asking anybody to block themselves out. We ask for no exclusivity whatsoever. So, you can ride anywhere."
Fixing a "complete disconnect" in showjumping’s event experience
The inaugural PJL event takes place next April in McCabe’s adopted city of Las Vegas at a purpose-built venue directly on the Strip. While other historic locations, such as Hamburg, have been chosen specifically for their deep equestrian heritage, Las Vegas was unashamedly selected to showcase the kind of high-end hospitality the PJL believes will help it stand out not just from other sporting events, but from other forms of world-class entertainment.
"We want to build an experience there like it has never been done in sports," says McCabe. "Because, candidly, if there’s one thing I learned on my travels last year, it’s that there was a pretty woeful experience on offer for what was a very high entry point on pricing. You would look around the VIP area and see the Bloomberg family, the Gates family, and Bruce Springsteen watching his daughter Jessica jump. Tom Brady was there with his kids. There was a very, very high-profile crowd, and yet they’re lining up for what is basically a cheap wedding experience. A buffet with dry chicken breasts and you’re slopping pasta onto a plate with a spoon. There’s a wine list which reads red, white, and sparkling. If you think about the sophistication of the crowd that’s there and the offering—there’s a complete disconnect."
Although big-spending hospitality guests will bring in significant revenue streams, McCabe is keen to stress that organisers have carefully considered how to improve the overall fan experience at every single price point, likening their approach to how modern nightclubs accommodate high-rolling VIP guests wanting private table service alongside music fans who simply want to see their favourite DJ live.
McCabe envisions a future scenario where cities around the world might actively compete to host PJL events, eager to capitalise on the substantial economic benefits that its high-profile events can bring to local economies.
A budget without media rights
Ticketing, hospitality, hosting fees, and lucrative sponsorship income will be crucial if the PJL is to become entirely self-sustaining once McCourt’s initial funding dries up around 2030. Indeed, traditional media rights revenues are not even baked into the core business plan at this early stage.
Changing consumer consumption habits and the explosive rise of streaming services mean the modern sports broadcasting market has entered a phase where only the biggest incumbent properties claim an ever-greater share of media rights budgets, leaving smaller or emerging properties to fight for scraps.
While the middle of the market is being squeezed, the same digital trends driving this shift present a significant opportunity for market disruptors without legacy models to maintain. For the PJL, the primary focus is on widespread exposure that will build an engaged audience, gather valuable consumer data, and directly drive ticket sales and sponsorship revenues.
"It’s quite a risky business putting your business plan on a media rights strategy if you’re a newcomer league, and especially a league in a sport that traditionally did not have that kind of following," explains PJL chief commercial officer Nikolaus von Doetinchem.
All content will be available on the PJL’s owned-and-operated digital services for free, while the league is simultaneously pursuing strategic distribution deals with free-to-air broadcasters and pay-TV channels with a deeply committed sports following.
Social media will also be vital to the strategy, with the PJL providing its athletes with a dedicated, self-service media hub where riders and teams can post highlights clips directly to their own social accounts within minutes or even seconds after their round has finished. This approach helps all participating parties build their personal brands, amplifies the league’s global reach, and adds tangible value to individual team sponsorships.
The PJL will assume complete operational control of broadcast production and is currently working in partnership with Aurora, the agency that manages the global world feed for Formula E, to make the remote viewing experience as close as possible to actually being present in the arena.
"If you look at normal showjumping—how it has been broadcast and how it’s filmed, nothing has changed over the last 20 years," says Von Doetinchem. "If you are in the stadium and see these 650-kilo horses jump over the jumps, or you hear the thunder of their hooves, it’s super exhilarating. If you watch the broadcast, it’s like somebody threw a wet blanket over it. It’s one camera. The audio is very muffled. It’s very sterile. We’re not going to innovate for vanity, but we are definitely going to present the sport in a way that has never been done before. We’re going to invest heavily in graphics, presentation, and production. Nobody has invested in graphics until now."
Planned broadcast innovations include "shadow" horse graphics that visually overlay an image of the current event leader onto a rider’s live run, advanced flight time data tracking, and real-time statistics on the number of strides taken by a horse. Furthermore, a high-end docuseries has been commissioned from Box to Box Films, the renowned producers behind Formula One’s Drive to Survive, in a strategic bid to expand the sport’s mainstream audience.
"If we can present in a modern way by integrating data into the broadcast and the storytelling and offering a behind-the-scenes viewpoint, then we can reach casual fans who might see our content via our ecosystem or through influencers," explains Von Doetinchem. "Equestrian has always been horse people doing horse stuff for other horse people. We want to break that up."
So, with reduced immediate pressure to generate short-term cash or television ratings, what does the PJL consider a successful debut season?
"If we end up with word of mouth recommendations, that is success," says McCabe. "If by day three in Las Vegas our riders, team owners, and fans are walking away saying ‘they delivered’. We are lucky enough to have a founder here who has given us enough runway to not have to worry drastically about the season one economics. We know we’ll sell the teams, and if we put on the events we think we can put on, and the word of mouth is strong, we know that season two will help us get to where we want to get to. We have significant commercial revenue targets we need to hit by year four, but we believe we’ll get there if the events are what we believe they will be."
