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.

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

This new partnership will be in place for the remainder of the 2025 E1 season, starting with the upcoming E1 Dubrovnik GP presented by Adriatic Luxury Hotels, which takes place later this week (13-14 June).

WATR will deploy its smart environmental monitoring system in Dubrovnik to capture real-time data on water quality in the Adriatic Sea where the RaceBirds compete to assess general water health.

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 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.

Following the Dubrovnik GP presented by Adriatic Luxury Hotels, WATR technology will be installed at the remaining E1 races at Lake Maggiore (Italy), Monaco, Lagos (Nigeria) and Miami (USA).

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.”

ENDS

About Team AlUla Championed by LeBron James

Team AlUla Championed by LeBron James was officially launched in January 2025, with the squad making its competitive debut the same month in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia - the season-opener to this year’s UIM E1 World Championship presented by PIF.

Rusty Wyatt (Canada) and Catie Munnings (UK) have been enlisted to drive for the team throughout the season, the duo sharing piloting duties on the all-electric E1 RaceBird.

AlUla - an ancient oasis city in Saudi Arabia with rich cultural landscapes and breathtaking landscapes - is the team’s title partner.

American professional basketball player LeBron James is the NBA’s all-time leading scorer and his entry into the E1 Series extends his thirst for competition. The team adds to his expansive investment portfolio across sport and entertainment which includes stakes in Fenway Sports Group, Beats by Dre, PGA Tour Enterprises and Liverpool FC.

Team AlUla Championed by LeBron James is led by Co-Team Principals John Marlow and Barny Whitwham, who have a combined 30 years’ experience working in commercial and technical roles across blue chip organisations, Formula 1 and World Rally Championship motorsport teams. They are joined by a crew with equally strong sporting, technical and partnerships prowess across global motorsport and sports categories.

For more information, please visit www.teamalula.com

About WATR

Established in 2017, WATR is a UK based business with a mission to improve the environment globally and was recognised by The Fast Company as a world changing idea. WATR is a cutting-edge environmental monitoring solution focused on water, soil, and air quality. It enables accurate, real-time remote monitoring through a robust, easy-to-use system designed for reliability and rapid deployment.

WATR’s portable, solar-powered units provide live data feeds to dashboards and customisable alerts, ensuring timely insights and responses. Suitable for a wide range of applications—including marine, river catchments, lakes, agriculture, construction, wastewater, aquaculture, and fisheries—WATR adapts to diverse environments.

Built for flexibility, the platform is sensor-agnostic and API-ready, supporting seamless integration with existing infrastructure and various sensor types, including WATR’s own benchmarked models. Data is securely transmitted via WATR’s proprietary telemetry system using GSM, satellite, and other communication methods, then centralised in the cloud for easy access and analysis.

For more information, please visit: www.watr.tech

About AlUla

Located 1,100 km from Riyadh, in North-West Saudi Arabia, AlUla is a place of extraordinary natural and human heritage. The vast area, covering 22,561km², includes a lush oasis valley, towering sandstone mountains and ancient cultural heritage sites dating back thousands of years to when the Lihyan and Nabataean kingdoms reigned.

The most well-known and recognised site in AlUla is Hegra, Saudi Arabia’s first UNESCO World Heritage Site. A 52-hectare ancient city, Hegra was the principal southern city of the Nabataean Kingdom and is comprised of 111 well-preserved tombs, many with elaborate facades cut out of the sandstone outcrops surrounding the walled urban settlement.

Current research also suggests Hegra was the most southern outpost of the Roman Empire after the Roman’s conquered the Nabataeans in 106 CE.

In addition to Hegra, AlUla is also home to ancient Dadan, the capital of the Dadan and Lihyan Kingdoms and considered to be one of the most developed 1st millennium BCE cities of the Arabian Peninsula, and Jabal Ikmah, an open air library of hundreds of inscriptions and writings in many different languages, which has been recently listed on the UNESCO’s memory of the World Register. Also AlUla Old Town Village, a labyrinth of more than 900 mudbrick homes developed from at least the 12th century, which has been selected as one of the World’s Best Tourism Villages in 2022 by the UNWTO.

For more information, please visit: experiencealula.com