Author: Bill Ross | Published: July 22, 2026 | Updated: July 22, 2026 This report is part of our library of marketing trends reports, and it is built the way we build all of them: primary data from the industry’s own measurement bodies, a named behavioral mechanism behind every projection, and a clear call on where the money should go. Every current figure below traces to the National Marine Manufacturers Association or to Info-Link Technologies, the firm that tracks U.S. boat registrations. Every forward number is marked as Emulent analysis, with the assumptions printed on the chart. The pandemic did not create new demand for boats. It pulled years of future purchases into 2020 and 2021. New powerboat retail peaked near 320,000 units in 2020, slid to 258,000 in 2023 and 231,600 in 2024, and NMMA’s January 2026 release estimates 2025 finished down another 8% to 10%, at approximately 215,000 to 225,000 units. NMMA expects 2026 sales on par to slightly up from 2025. That is mean reversion, the most predictable pattern in consumer demand: a spike driven by a one-time event falls back toward the long-run base rate, and the base rate for this market sits near 210,000 units. Projection: Emulent analysis based on mean reversion from the pandemic spike, assuming a floor near 210,000 units set by replacement demand from the existing owner base, cross-checked against NMMA’s flat-to-slightly-up 2026 outlook (January 2026). The marketing implication is blunt. A brand that budgets for a return to 2021 volume will overspend on conquest media, discount inventory that was never going to move, and report a “soft year” that was actually the market telling the truth. Plan revenue against a 215,000 to 227,000 unit market through 2028. Any upside beyond that has to come from audiences you build, so the rest of this report is about which audiences those are. Info-Link Technologies reported that as of year-end 2024, the median age of U.S. boat owners is 60, and there are now more boat owners in their 70s than in their 40s. Info-Link’s read is that today’s owners are largely the same people who owned boats 25 years ago. Status quo bias explains why: current owners keep buying, upgrading, and re-registering, while the harder work of recruiting someone into the category never happened at scale. Absent a real change in first-time buyer acquisition, we project the median climbs to roughly 61 by 2026 and 62 by 2028. Projection: Emulent analysis based on cohort aging under status quo bias, assuming the median rises roughly half a year annually at current first-time buyer rates, cross-checked against Info-Link Technologies commentary published with NMMA’s 2024 year-end data (March 2025).
“A retargeting list is not a growth strategy. It is a lease on an audience, and in this industry the landlord is demographics. Every boat brand we audit spends most of its media reaching people who already own the product, then wonders why cost per sale climbs every year. The list is not getting worse at converting. It is getting smaller.” The growth budget belongs on buyers under 45, and the creative has to be built for them, which usually means rebuilding it. Messaging written for a 60-year-old repeat buyer leans on horsepower, tradition, and trade-in value. A 38-year-old first-time buyer needs to see cost of ownership, trailerability, and people who look like their own family on the water. Our Gen Z and Gen Alpha purchase behavior research shows younger buyers verify a brand across reviews, social, and search before they contact anyone, so the repositioning has to run everywhere at once. That is brand development work, a system rebuilt around a new buyer, and brands that treat it as a one-season campaign will be back at the same median age in 2028. NMMA’s January 2026 data puts pre-owned boats at approximately 80% of total annual unit sales, with pre-owned units reaching nearly 860,000 in 2024 against roughly 232,000 new. A boat brand that only markets new inventory is ignoring 4 of every 5 transactions in its own category, and, worse, ignoring the trade-up pipeline those transactions feed. The person who buys a used bowrider this summer is the most probable new-boat customer of 2029. We project pre-owned share drifts from 78.8% in 2024 toward 80% by 2028, because loss aversion and rate-driven price sensitivity keep pushing buyers toward the lower-risk purchase. Projection: Emulent analysis based on loss aversion and rate-driven price sensitivity holding buyers in the pre-owned market, assuming a ceiling near 82% because trade-in supply depends on new-boat sales, cross-checked against NMMA’s 2024 pre-owned and new unit data (January 2026). Content for used-boat owners is not charity. It is the cheapest first touch with your future new buyer. Maintenance guides, winterization checklists, buying-inspection walkthroughs, and honest model-year comparisons earn the relationship years before the trade-up conversation, and they earn it at content prices instead of media prices. Most manufacturers refuse to publish this material because it “helps sell someone else’s used boat.” That objection has it backwards: the brand that teaches a used-boat owner how to love the water owns the relationship when that owner is ready to buy new. Building that library is exactly what content strategy services exist to do, and in this category the library outperforms another quarter of conquest ads. NMMA’s monthly data through May 2025 splits the market along a line most trend reports miss. Year to date against 2024, yachts were down 2.6% and freshwater fishing boats down 2.9%, while wake sport boats fell 14%, pontoons fell 15.7%, and jet boats fell 20%. NMMA’s full-year read confirms the pattern: freshwater fishing boats held steady with 2023 at approximately 53,000 units and were the volume bright spot of 2025. Loss aversion decides what survives a downturn. When money is tight, buyers protect purchases that do a job and defer purchases that signal a lifestyle. A fishing boat catches dinner. A wake boat announces who you are, and identity can wait a year. No projection applied. These are reported NMMA measurements for January through May 2025; we do not draw forecast curves where no credible trajectory exists. If you sell utility, your marketing job is availability and trust: show up in local search, keep reviews current, make financing plain. If you sell lifestyle, your product no longer supplies its own urgency, so your marketing has to manufacture it through social proof. Real owners, real water, real families, filmed and photographed without the varnish. Polished stock footage of models on a boat reads as advertising; a genuine owner teaching their kid to surf behind the boat reads as evidence. That is the case for investing in brand videography and brand photography built around customers instead of catalogs: believability is the only lever left when the buyer has already decided they can wait. Here is the number that should reorganize every boating marketing budget: while new unit sales fell roughly a third from their 2020 peak, annual U.S. recreational boating expenditures rose from $49.3 billion in 2020 to approximately $55 billion in 2024, with NMMA’s industry data forecasting 3% to 5% growth for 2025, near $57 billion. Spending on aftermarket accessories and boating outings alone reached $24.5 billion in 2024. Owners keep paying for slips, service, fuel, storage, electronics, and upgrades even when they stop buying hulls. The endowment effect explains it: once someone owns the boat, the money follows the boat. We project total spending grows to roughly $62 billion by 2028, capped near 4% a year because the owner count underneath it is flat. Projection: Emulent analysis based on the endowment effect keeping owners paying for service, storage and upgrades, assuming nominal growth capped near 4% per year on a flat owner count, cross-checked against NMMA’s 2025 expenditure forecast of 3% to 5% growth.
“Sunk investment breeds commitment. A person who owns a $70,000 boat has already told themselves a story about who they are, and they will spend every season funding that story. The near-term revenue in this industry is sitting in the service bay and the accessories catalog, and most brands are too busy chasing strangers to collect it.” Owner marketing is where the next three years of revenue live: service reminders, upgrade paths, accessory bundles, storage and winterization offers, owner events, referral programs. The customer loyalty trends we track across industries show the same thing this data shows: retention spending compounds while acquisition spending resets to zero every season. In boating, with a flat owner count and a $55 billion wallet, the math is not close. Boat shows still drive an estimated 30% to 60% of annual retail sales for the industry, per NMMA, which makes them the single most concentrated revenue window in the marketing calendar. The mistake is treating the show as the campaign. The show is the close; the campaign is the eight weeks before it, when buyers build their shortlists. Digital spend should peak in the pre-show window, retarget show attendees afterward, and go quiet in the dead months instead of dribbling out evenly across the year. Check your allocation against our marketing budget benchmarks; most boating brands we review spread spend flat across twelve months and then underfund the ninety days that produce half their sales. Second, aim the acquisition budget at accessibility, because the data says that is where the market actually is. Sixty-one percent of boaters have a household income of $100,000 or less, and 95% of boats on the water are under 26 feet, small enough to trailer to a local ramp. The under-45 buyer this industry needs is not a yacht prospect. They are a family weighing a used pontoon against a boat club membership, and shared access models, which NMMA reports are growing, are a feeder system for ownership rather than a threat to it. Market to the person entering the water, whatever door they use. Third, win the research phase you never see. A boat buyer spends weeks or months researching before contacting anyone, and an increasing share of that research now happens inside AI answers rather than on page one of Google. What those answers say about your brand is assembled largely from your reviews, so treat review volume and recency as media. Our research on how reviews affect AI search covers the mechanics, and AI search optimization services exist precisely because the shortlist is now built in places your analytics cannot watch. If a buyer’s first question to an AI assistant returns a competitor’s name and a three-year-old complaint about your service department, no boat show booth recovers that. The stance we opened with survives every dataset in this report. New boat sales have reverted to a base rate near 215,000 units and will climb only slowly. The owner base is aging at half a year per year. Pre-owned is 80% of transactions. Spending grows even as units shrink, because the money follows the people already on the water. So the budget goes where the behavior is: first-time buyers under 45, who are the only cure for a median age of 60, and current owners, who are funding $55 billion a year that most brands barely market to. A brand still buying conquest ads against 2021 assumptions is paying 2026 prices to reach a 1999 audience. If you want a second set of eyes on where your boating brand’s budget actually goes, talk to a marketing agency that will show you the math before asking for a contract. We do not do long-term lock-ins. The results either retain you or they do not.
2026-2028 Boating Industry Marketing Projections and Industry Report
Boat brands still planning against pandemic-era sales numbers are planning a fiction. New powerboat retail has fallen from roughly 320,000 units in 2020 to an estimated 215,000 to 225,000 in 2025, the median U.S. boat owner is now 60 years old, and 4 of every 5 boats sold are pre-owned. The marketing budget that wins 2026 through 2028 goes to two audiences: first-time buyers under 45, and the owners already spending $55 billion a year on the water. Conquest advertising aimed at the same aging list of new-boat intenders buys a smaller audience every quarter at a rising price.
New Boat Sales Reverted to Their Base Rate, and They Are Staying There
The Median Boat Owner Is 60, and Your Retargeting List Ages With Them
— The Strategy Team at Emulent
Pre-Owned Is 4 of Every 5 Boats Sold. Market to Used-Boat Owners.
High Rates Punished Lifestyle Boats and Spared Utility Boats
Unit Sales Fell 33% While Spending Rose to $55 Billion
— Bill Ross, Founder of Emulent
Where the 2026 to 2028 Budget Goes
The Spike Was the Anomaly. Plan for the Base Rate.
