Boats Group Price Hikes Fuel Industrywide, Global Response

Rate increases proposed and imposed by Boats Group, which controls SEO-dominant listing websites including YachtWorld and Boat Trader, have sent shockwaves throughout the recreational boating industry. According to documents obtained by Soundings Trade Only, and additional reporting from more than a dozen industry sources, significant concerns date back to at least 2022.

Information about the scope of the rate increases, and about the depth and breadth of frustration, follows significant industry response to an article that Soundings Trade Only published in the March print edition.

“The price hikes that dealers are facing are one of the top issues and concerns that we’re hearing about from our members,” Matt Gruhn, president of the Marine Retailers Association of the Americas, told Soundings Trade Only.

Dealers, brokers, marketers and OEMs not only say they are angry about the rate hikes, but also are experiencing a deluge of pitches from competing services trying to capitalize on the widespread exasperation. The situation is so pervasive that the MRAA recently launched an educational program to try and help the industry navigate digital-marketing strategies, tactics and options.

While the MRAA has not been publicly vocal about the issue until now, Gruhn says, “This has been going on for more than a year, and MRAA has been in conversations with Boats Group, all the way to the level of their CEO, since January 2024.”

Gruhn characterized those conversations by adding, “At the end of the day, they are a private entity operating in a capitalistic economy, and they made it clear that they believed their pricing to be fair and appropriate.”

Ian Atkins, who left Boats Group as its CEO in 2018 and became CEO for U.K.-based competitor Rightboat in 2023, says the rate increases are problematic for many of the affected businesses. “It’s kind of a life-and-death story for a lot of brokers and dealers,” Atkins says. “They need to advertise. They can’t afford to.”

Soundings Trade Only requested interviews with Boats Group several times for this story. Boats Group responded through legal counsel in a letter sent to Firecrown Media Group, the parent company of Soundings Trade Only: “Boats Group denies the demonstrably false statements published in Soundings Trade Only’s stories. The stories fail to disclose that they are written by an ex-contractor of Boats Group. We have showed STO’s counsel precise evidence providing the falsity of the statements. Of course, whether STO chooses to publish this evidence or conceal the truth from its readers is not within our control. Our customers’ repeat business with our platforms is a source of great pride for us, and a testament to the highly competitive value that we offer.”

After reviewing Boats Group’s letter, Soundings Trade Only’s editor-in-chief determined that an error was inserted during the March article’s production process. An editor added a photo caption stating: “Commission hikes at online yacht-sales sites have brokers calling foul and looking for alternatives for their listings.”

Boats Group does not charge commissions. Soundings Trade Only regrets the error. 

Industry Speaks Out
Multiple clients of Boats Group sent Soundings Trade Only emails, sales presentations, contracts and invoices they had received from the company, documenting proposed and actual rate increases that align with what numerous sources say they are experiencing.

Jeremy Cohen, owner of Seabound Yachts in Clayton, N.Y., said in March that Boats Group was trying to raise his monthly rates from $2,600 to $4,430. “This is more than my mortgage payment, what I’m paying right now, and I’m not getting a return on that investment,” Cohen told Soundings Trade Only. “I’m a one-man show, and I tell them, ‘You guys are going to bankrupt me.’ ”

Cohen spoke with Soundings Trade Only again in April and said he had remained a Boats Group customer, but, “I’m still not happy. I was able to get them down to $3,100 a month. That is still too much, but I wouldn’t sign a year contract. I’m month-to-month.”

Jeff Stanley, president of Gilman Yachts in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., told Soundings Trade Only his monthly rate increased so much that it “cuts into our bottom line. The amount of leads that Boats Group provides us is nowhere near equal to the high costs they charge us.”

Stanley also alleged Boats Group changed the way he’s billed by enrolling him in an auto-pay system without his permission. “My agent said she’d look into it, and I got an email the next day that said, ‘We’ve switched, we only accept auto payments, and you’ll always be on time,’ ” Stanley says. 

Mike Webster, owner of Hansen Yachts in Jacksonville, Fla., says Boats Group notified him about a price increase on his monthly rate this past December or January. He went back and forth with the company a few times, he says, and as of late April had not been charged the higher amount.

Webster says Boats Group did a good job on personal outreach with him, and the YachtWorld site continues to bring him sales. He said his clients want to see their boats there: “The public, the owners, my clients as a broker are expecting to see their vessel on the well-established YachtWorld site.”

Soundings Trade Only also heard from Cindy Sailor, former associate publisher at Power & Motoryacht (a sister publication to Soundings Trade Only) and former executive director of the International Yacht Brokers Association. Sailor says she started working for Boats Group in 2019, handling OEM national account sales.

She says Boats Group “was a delightful place to work” until rates increased so much that by spring 2024, there was a “groundswell of dealers screaming at these meetings about how they felt, that they were being extorted, and the rates were outrageous and going to put them out of business. That was permeating up to the manufacturers. I had multiple meetings like that about a year ago at the Palm Beach boat show.”

Sailor was laid off in November 2024, she says, after she objected to Boats Group’s attempts to raise rates. “Somebody who might be spending $2,500 or $4,000 a month had to either suck it up and pay $10,000 or $15,000 a month, or their account would be canceled,” Sailor says.

She and another person who has done recent work for Boats Group used the word “hated” to describe the industry’s overall feeling toward the company. “I love to go to boat shows,” Sailor says. “It’s like going to a reunion. It’s always fun and pleasant, and people love to see you, but last year the attitude completely changed.”

Soundings Trade Only also sent an interview request through the BoatTraderSucks.com website, which began posting content in early March. Tom Morford, who does marketing and sales for Oakdale Yacht Sales on New York’s Long Island, told Soundings Trade Only that he created the website after analyzing Oakdale’s internal data about the value of Boats Group services.

Morford says that after launching BoatTraderSucks.com, he got 50 or 60 subscribers in less than a week. He says he also received more than a dozen messages from people saying they loved the site and asking what he thought they should do.

“You’ve got some really great grassroots businesspeople who’ve worked really hard to grow their businesses, but they’re not really good with data,” he says. “I think it’s really difficult for a lot of these people to drill down into this data, but there’s no question that the price hikes have them questioning what they’re getting for their money.”

Numerous people also shared Soundings Trade Only’s article on social media. One was Zak Smith, president of Rte. 113 Boat Sales & Service in Selbyville, Del., who wrote publicly on Facebook: “Okay boat dealer friends, when is enough enough?”

His post received more than a dozen comments, including one from Hampton Anderson, sales manager at Marine 360 in Chapin, S.C., who replied, “Just cancelled them two weeks ago!”; from Evan Cusson, sales manager at Atlantic Outboard in Westbrook, Conn., who commented, “Now is the time for us dealers to pull out of Boats Group, a unified front. We are tired of getting ripped off”; and from Chris Leigh, owner and president of Oyster Cove Boatworks, with two locations in Virginia, who wrote, “Just cancelled them #crooks.”

Boats Group Response
The letter from Boats Group legal counsel challenged information that Soundings Trade Only attributed to Stewart Roach, the owner of Norwood Yacht Sales in Quincy, Mass., and to Maryline Bossar, who worked for ACY Yachts in Annapolis, Md.

Boats Group counsel stated: “In your Story, Mr. Roach is quoted as saying that he ‘can’t sustain the new monthly rates that the Boats Group brand Yachtworld wants him to pay,’ and ‘[i]f you’re paying rent at $1,200 and this is close to $3,000, it’s not sustainable.’ In reality, his company Norwood Yacht Sales is paying $2,039 per month for its YachtWorld AdvantagePlus Membership.”

Soundings Trade Only then contacted Roach, who sent documents confirming that he had contacted his Boats Group representative in October 2024 after hearing that a company similar to his was having its rates increased to roughly $3,000. That same month, his Boats Group representative responded with two options to price-lock for 12 to 14 months, disqualifying him from market-rate adjustments. The representative told Roach he could keep his YachtWorld subscription for $1,939 “AND RUN THE RISK OF BEING RANDOMLY BUMPED,” or upgrade to YachtWorld Plus for $2,039. 

“I was forced to eliminate Boat Trader altogether or pay another $1,000, roughly, per month,” Roach told Soundings Trade Only. Eliminating his payments to Boat Trader, he added, “brought the bill down.” 

He then signed the contract at a monthly rate of $2,039, but sent Boats Group a cancellation email this past March, writing that “while I thought I might be able to find a way to continue with Boats Group, I now know it is not financially sustainable.” Roach added that the last three boats he sold were from visibility on Facebook Marketplace, and thanked Boats Group for its service.

About Bossar, the letter from Boats Group legal counsel stated: “In your story, Maryline Bossar is quoted saying, ‘[a]s a marketer, this sudden rate hike is simply unacceptable,’ and that ‘[i]t cannot be justified by Boats Group, save for their ambition to grow profits while their products are only marginally improving, and lead generation [is] staying flat. We are, simply put, in shock.’ In reality, their leads are not flat: Maryline Bossar (ACY Yachts) received 72% more leads YTD in 2025 than in 2024; and they received 40% more leads in 2024 than in 2023. As for their rate, it is driven by their inventory, which includes over fifty yachts that are each worth over $1,000,000. In addition to significantly increased leads, their services have been enhanced too.”

Soundings Trade Only then contacted Bossar, who said she stands by her original statement. She no longer works at ACY, so she cannot access the company’s data, but she said: “My assertion was true, and all my brokers were telling me the lead quality was going down.” She added separately: “There are many possibilities that can explain a jump in leads.” 

Bossar said that on pricing, she told Boats Group that in real estate online listings, clients are not charged more depending on the value of the listing. “They don’t give you the rationale for the pricing,” Bossar said of Boats Group. “It’s not based on the number of listings. It’s not based on the number of offices. They will say they factor in your location and the price of your yachts, but I have asked, repeatedly, what it costs for A, B and C, and there is no answer.”

She added that she’s now advising other brokerages, and her Boats Group contact “couldn’t tell me what the price of a new account is. At the end of the day, it’s the price according to what they want to charge.”

In terms of enhanced services during her time with ACY Yachts, Bossar said: “If there were enhancements, they were not so significant that I noticed. And what matters is quality leads. If you’re not getting ROI — YachtWorld can claim they’re closing all these deals, but they’re not.”

MRAA Experience 
Gruhn, at the MRAA, says frustration about digital marketing is among the top challenges members cite in their businesses right now. That description comes amid high inflation, steep interest rates, difficulties with closing sales, shifting tariff policies and concerns about whether lawmakers will extend tax cuts that are scheduled to expire this year.

In response to requests from members, Gruhn says, the MRAA considered creating its own online platform or partnering with an existing platform. The board of directors then decided to proceed, instead, with the educational program related to digital marketing.

“What our board — which, it’s important to point out, is all dealers who are one way or the other challenged by this same issue — has decided is that we, as MRAA, cannot really compete in that space,” Gruhn says. “We don’t have the technological background or expertise. We don’t have the marketing capability. We don’t have the funding to be able to penetrate the market in a way that would help the situation for our members.”

Gruhn says the MRAA has taken numerous steps since members’ concerns first emerged more than a year ago. Boats Group representatives were invited to give presentations to the MRAA board of directors and to a “20 group” — nearly two dozen high-performing, noncompeting boat dealers who gather each quarter to share best practices and insights.

The MRAA also created a committee that surveyed dealers about general online marketing practices, Gruhn says. The survey revealed that many dealers need help trying to understand which components of their digital marketing are working. “They’re not clear on the metrics, like where their leads are coming from or how many leads they close from each lead source,” Gruhn says.

The MRAA’s new educational program is designed to fill those gaps. Gruhn says it will provide tools, resources and more to help dealers navigate online marketing options, no matter which services they select. “We’re putting a spotlight on digital marketing performance,” Gruhn says. “We’ll have a webinar series. We’ll have these survey results. We’ll have online courses. Lots of tools.”

Competitors Abound
Soundings Trade Only spoke with a half-dozen Boats Group competitors to cite examples of what brokers, dealers, marketers and OEMs say they are encountering regularly from an ever-increasing number of alternative services overall.

Rightboat is a competing service led by Atkins, the former Boats Group CEO, whose work with the YachtWorld site dates back 25 years. Rightboat’s content director is John Burnham, who previously was managing editor at Boats Group. As Atkins explains it, they and others decided to “put the band back together” in response to the way current Boats Group ownership is doing business.

Atkins told Soundings Trade Only that as of 2016, the average subscription for YachtWorld, Boats.com or Boat Trader was about $500 per month. Apax Partners purchased Boats Group in 2016, added new technology and value, and increased prices by a couple-hundred dollars through 2018, he says, “but on the back of new value-added products. It wasn’t more money for the same product. It was more money for additional products.”

Atkins says he retired in 2018 and spent most of his time cruising. Then, in early 2021, Permira Funds acquired Boats Group. Permira is a private equity firm. While financial details were not disclosed about the Boats Group acquisition, Crunchbase’s investor oversight states that Permira invests in late-stage companies. That generally means providing capital to businesses that are well-established, often nearing an exit event like an IPO or acquisition.

A common exit strategy for such a business that is doing well is to try and maximize profits — which is what numerous sources told Soundings Trade Only they believe Boats Group is attempting to do with the rate increases. 

“Permira’s pricing strategy was extraordinary and is extraordinary,” Atkins says. “More than half the boat businesses worldwide cannot afford those prices.”

Atkins joined Rightboat in January 2023. Today, he says, Rightboat has 425 customers in the United States, U.K. and English-speaking markets in Europe, and is adding about 15 customers a month. In January, Rightboat launched a campaign called “Switch and Save.” 

Atkins told Soundings Trade Only: “The biggest difference between us and Boats Group isn’t about technology or strategy or process. It’s about price.” The average Rightboat subscription, he says, is $400 to $500 per month. Rightboat also has done about a dozen deals, Atkins says, that help brokers maximize their own online marketing budgets and websites, “so that if they want to be a little more independent in the future and not get caught out again, then that’s a service we’re prepared to offer.”

Another former Boats Group insider offering an alternative is Sailor, the former Boats Group sales rep. She is now a reseller for ReadyProspect.ai through her own company, Sailor Marketing.

The technology, she says, can help boat dealers figure out the identities of 30% to 50% of anonymous visitors to their own websites. “Once we identify who’s coming to their website, we do an email campaign to them, and we can target them via Meta, via Google, we can do video ads on YouTube — there are any number of ways to reach them,” she says.

More competition is coming from Fort Pierce, Fla.-based boatbuilder Twin Vee PowerCats, which CEO Joseph Visconti says paid $5 million in February to purchase the URLs BoatsForSale.com and YachtsForSale.com. Also in February, Visconti announced that he had hired Tom Huffman as chief information officer, adding Huffman’s skills in leading IT strategy, enterprise infrastructure and more as the former CIO of First American Financial.

In mid-April, Visconti told Soundings Trade Only that he had a team of seven engineers and three support staff working to migrate the sites, improve what already exists, and add what he described as “some really interesting tech up our sleeve.” Visconti says he’s offering dealers 90 days for free on BoatsForSale.com, then having conversations about the value of the service going forward, along with new tools he’ll be launching, such as an AI-based way to value a boat.

“This is about solving a problem,” he says, noting the “crazy” push-pull of supply and demand that boatbuilders and dealers have experienced since the pandemic. He says he’s heard from at least 10 dealers about Boats Group rate increases ranging from 70% to 100%.

“I think everyone is trying to do what they can — the manufacturer, the dealer, the customer, the service provider — and along comes Boat Trader, which increases its pricing by 70%, which is counterintuitive to what we’re all trying to do to bring the recreational marine industry back from the brink,” Visconti says. 

Another company in the mix is Boatmart, part of Trader Interactive, which is owned by Australia-based CAR Group. The company says Trader Interactive has online marketplaces with more than 13 million monthly unique visitors in the powersports, RV, aircraft, marine, commercial vehicle and heavy-equipment industries. Roger Dunbar, chief marketing officer for Trader Interactive and owner of Boatmart, says the business model Boatmart announced in March is pay-per-lead, allowing boat dealers to pay individually for each lead that includes a prospect’s contact information. Lead prices are based on a boat’s value; for a $100,000 boat, the cost would be around $70 per lead, he says.

Dunbar adds that it’s important for multiple listing options to exist. “Competition is the way to hold everybody accountable — suppliers, vendors, everybody,” Dunbar says. “When there’s not competition, it doesn’t matter. If somebody has an oligopoly or a monopoly, they’re going to take advantage. They can’t help themselves.”

Dunbar says another key element of Boatmart’s service is lead quality. “In addition to having a lead form and all that information, we eliminate bots,” he says. “We eliminate duplicate leads.”

Yet another competitor is YachtingAddress.com, which began in France. Company representative Pascale Mougenel told Soundings Trade Only the site launched in March 2024. “After the first exaggerated increase of Boats Group rates, in just 10 days we decided to open a boat-listing website initially for French brokers, but which has since been extended to the rest of Europe,” Mougenel says.

YachtingAddress.com is offering lead billing, excluding VAT, at €13 (about $14) or monthly subscriptions at €99 (about $107) for up to 20 boats, or €149 (about $161) for an unlimited number of boats, according to Mougenel. The site is available in French, Italian and English languages. 

Still more competition is coming from YachtWay.com, which CEO and co-founder Heigo Paartalu says he created after moving to Florida in 2018 and shopping for a boat online. “These were boats that cost millions of dollars, but these websites looked archaic. I was afraid of getting scammed,” says Paartalu, who then got involved with marketing for Pardo Yachts in Italy. “The minute I saw the YachtWorld website, I wanted to understand how the yachts were being sold from the inside.”

As of mid-March, his competing site YachtWay offered listings along with a way for dealers to create boat photography, videos and 3D tours that can be posted on any platform. The cost for YachtWay clients to create content is based on boat length: $20 per foot for photos and video, plus $7 per foot for a 3D tour, Paartalu says. The company also has an EasySign platform for clients to create contracts and listing agreements, built with what Paartalu calls “bank-level security.”

Future Thinking
Multiple sources told Soundings Trade Only that so far, no leading competitor to Boats Group has emerged. Cohen, at Seabound Yachts, says: “If you go online right now and look for a 2005 Sea Ray for sale, the first things that come up are Boat Trader or YachtWorld.”

Webster, at Hansen Yachts, says one competing site’s representative told him in April: “The conversation started out that the technology is new, and they’re spending $100,000 for this and $100,000 for that, and we’re going to be the next YachtWorld.”

Sailor says what’s happening reminds her of how businesses used to rely on advertising in the Yellow Pages as a single, primary source, and pay dearly for it, until Google came along and made physical phone books obsolete. “I think the stuff that Boats Group is doing is forcing people to look for innovation,” she says.

A significant problem for many people in the industry, Dunbar says, is that “it’s very, very hard for dealers to attribute where leads come from, unless you gather that information and package it for them.”

Gruhn says the MRAA’s educational program is intended to help dealers understand all the options, including where leads actually originate and whether they really closed. “Without that, how do you know if a lead source is performing for you or not performing for you? How do you know what it’s worth?” Gruhn says. “We’re trying to serve dealers the best way that we can, and that’s providing them with tools and resources and best practices and strategies that will help them be successful with their digital marketing no matter what route they choose, no matter what partners they choose, and no matter how they approach it.”

While the MRAA is working on education, the International Yacht Brokers Association officially announced its own website, Yachtr.com, this past October. Soundings Trade Only later asked IYBA president Paul Flannery, in a phone interview, about the many companies now presenting themselves as alternatives to Boats Group. “In this digital age, every kid who can buy a pair of Italian loafers and get a slick haircut and run around a boat show will tell you they can solve the problems. ‘Rely on us,’ ” he says. “They come through our booth all the time saying they have the right solution, and we should get our members on board.

“What the industry is quickly realizing is that if they do chase these things like a bunch of crows, it’s out of the frying pan and into the fire,” Flannery adds. “What’s to stop any of these places from becoming the next problem?”

Atkins says that based on what he’s hearing, the current status of online boat marketing is a real dilemma for the industry overall. “The vibes there are pretty strong that the industry needs to look after itself,” Atkins says, “because if the people selling boats can’t afford to advertise, everybody loses, including the boat buyers and the boat sellers.”

Gary Reich, who has been editor-in-chief of Soundings Trade Only since 2022, and writer Kim Kavin, who has been a freelancer since 2003, both contributed content to Boats Group websites in the past. 

You can reach Reich at [email protected].