Sea-Doo Holds Its Summer Peak as Wake Boats Deliver Their Strongest Back-to-Back Quarter Since Early 2025
New search data from more than 1.47 million quarterly queries shows Australia’s marine market consolidating at the top while the wake boat segment delivers its most convincing recovery of the year.
Melbourne, June 2026 — Retain Media’s Q1 2026 Marine Market Brand Consideration Report is now available, drawing on 94 brands, approximately 31,000 keywords, and more than 1.47 million searches across Australia’s marine sector.
‘Q1 2026 was a quarter where the headline positions told one story and the segments beneath them told another,’ said Brian Sullivan, Director at Retain Media. ‘Sea-Doo and Yamaha held their familiar positions at the top, but the more interesting data sat further down the table.
Three wake boat brands recovering simultaneously is not a coincidence, and the propulsion segment’s quiet multi-quarter compression is a pattern that dealers and distributors will want to understand before it becomes more pronounced.’
Sea-Doo and Yamaha Hold the Top of the Table
Sea-Doo held 11.1% in Q1 2026, easing just 0.2 percentage points from its Q4 2025 high. That Q4 2025 reading was the brand’s strongest across all of 2025, and retaining nearly all of it into Q1 2026 points to an audience that stays engaged well beyond the summer peak.
Together, Sea-Doo and Yamaha, which steadied at 8.3% after sequential declines through the second half of 2025, accounted for roughly 19% of all marine search share in Q1 2026.
Wake Boats Deliver a Broad-Based Category Recovery
It is uncommon for three competing brands in the same niche to record meaningful gains simultaneously, but that is precisely what the wake boat segment delivered. Malibu Boats climbed from 2.6% to 3.4%, Mastercraft rose from 1.4% to 1.9%, and Nautique continued its recovery to 1.5%, all extending gains from Q4 2025 into a second consecutive quarter.
When competing brands move in the same direction together, it suggests consumer appetite for the category itself is growing.
The Q3 2025 dip now looks more like a temporary slowdown than a lasting shift, with ABS household spending data from that period suggesting Australians were pulling back on big-ticket purchases.
Haines Hunter Rises, but the Picture Requires Context
Haines Hunter rose from 3.5% to 3.9% in Q1 2026, a quarter that also saw the brand’s factory fire on January 9.
Some of that movement may reflect information-seeking around the recovery process, though a 0.4 percentage point gain is not the kind of spike that points unambiguously to a single cause.
Gradual brand awareness growth is an equally plausible explanation, and the Q2 2026 result will provide a cleaner read on the brand’s trajectory.
Propulsion Brands Compress Quietly
Mercury Marine eased to 6.4%, extending a contraction underway since Q3 2025. Suzuki Marine arrived at 3.9% after four consecutive quarters of marginal decline, and Volvo Penta fell to 2.4% from 3.0% in Q2 2025.
One plausible reading is that Japanese outboard brands have been capturing a growing share of consideration traffic, though search data alone cannot confirm that with certainty.
Yamaha’s minor uptick to 8.3% was the one directional exception in the category, and whether it represents genuine stabilisation will become clearer as the year progresses.