Team AlUla Championed by LeBron James partners with WATR to assess environmental impact

Team AlUla Championed by LeBron James, which competes in the UIM E1 World Championship presented by PIF (E1), has signed a new partnership deal with WATR – an innovative tech focused environmental monitoring company – to help assess the team’s environmental impact.

The E1 World Championship is the first all-electric powerboat racing series governed by the Union Internationale Motonautique (UIM).

WATR’s core product is a multi-parameter water quality monitoring system, which the company says is low-cost, easy to deploy and extremely versatile.

The UK-based company provides real-time data to desktop dashboards or mobile, including alerts and notifications when parameters such as acidity, turbidity, dissolved oxygen and salinity are breached.

Team AlUla Championed by LeBron James will work closely with WATR to publicly report, collaborate with local stakeholders and influence wider E1 ecosystem practices.  Through WATR’s cutting-edge technology, the team – which has Catie Munnings and Rusty Wyatt as its pilots – will effectively visualise water quality changes before and after events in the world’s first all-electric raceboat championship.

Through Team AlUla’s Blue Impact strategy, a team-wide commitment to sustainability, the race outfit recognises that competing in marine environments brings a duty to minimise harm and lead with actions. Therefore, as part of this new collaboration with WATR, Team AlUla said it will be able to better understand its environmental footprint and take necessary footsteps to reduce and restore.

This approach is closely aligned with the vision of the team’s title partner, AlUla — the ancient desert oasis destination located in north-west Saudi Arabia, renowned for its commitment to sustainability and ecological restoration.

AlUla is spearheading a large-scale environmental regeneration programme aimed at revitalising thousands of hectares of degraded land by 2030. This is complemented by a region-wide effort to replant native tree species within their original ecosystems. Additionally, AlUla’s sustainability programmes include the revival of indigenous wildlife populations, notably through a pioneering plan to reintroduce the critically endangered Arabian leopard in the coming years.

Glyn Cotton, CEO and co-founder WATR, commented: “Partnering with Team AlUla in the E1 Series is an exciting opportunity to demonstrate how cutting-edge technology can drive real environmental accountability in sport. Our mission at WATR is to improve water quality globally, and this partnership fits perfectly with that goal. By turning water quality into live, actionable data, we’re helping teams like AlUla understand their environmental footprint in real time and take meaningful steps to reduce it. It’s a powerful example of how innovation in environmental monitoring can be used not just to observe change, but to lead it — on and off the water.”

John Marlow, Team AlUla Co-Team Principal, commented: “For Team AlUla, competing in E1 is about more than just racing — it’s about showing that high-performance sport can also be a force for good. Partnering with WATR gives us a way to truly understand the impact we’re having on the marine environment and enables us to put things right where we need to. Their technology helps us back up our intentions with real data, so we can be more thoughtful in how we operate and more ambitious in how we can help protect these incredible environments we get to race in.”

Barny Whitwham, Team AlUla Co-Team Principal, commented: “As an engineer, I’m always looking to bring an analytical approach to everything the team does. The partnership with WATR allows us to bring that exact philosophy to our Blue Impact Championship campaign. We’ll be able to quantify our impact as a team and make evidence-based steps to mitigate that impact. Having real-time water quality data helps us understand our environmental footprint and make informed decisions about how to reduce it.”

SourceWATR

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