Shaquille O’Neal is one of the greatest names in basketball history and also one of the biggest players. Though he’s retired now, he dominated the sport when he was on the court. These days he’s busy doing a lot of things and part of that includes hanging out on his luxury yacht. 

Because Shaq can be a private sort of guy there’s a lot of speculation out there about the yacht itself, the size, the cost and the features. Unfortunately not all of that info is reliable and a good portion of it seems to come from misunderstandings about exactly which boat people are even talking about. Let’s try to get to the bottom of this Shaq yacht as best we can and help cut through some of that misinformation to give you the facts as we know them.

What’s the Name of Shaq’s Yacht?

Shaq’s mansion known as Shaq Apulco

As we’re about to see, the amount of false info about Shaq’s yacht is kind of impressive. Some reports say that Shaq named his yacht Free Throw, and one even added a little to call it the Free Thrower, but we’re going to talk about that later and how it’s a joke. Others will tell you that Shaq named his yacht Shaqapulco.

Back in 2018, Shaq put his seaside Florida mansion up for sale for about $28 million. That property also went by the name of Shaqapulco, something that it looks like he picked up on Twitter back in 2010 as a joke from someone else. The name must have struck a chord with him and he enjoyed it.

Elsewhere on the internet here are pictures of him on a yacht named Sensation also, but that is a charter yacht and not his. 

It seems like Shaqapulco is the actual name of his yacht, or at least the most likely name since that is something he has used in the past. There don’t seem to be any photos or interviews which confirm this, however.

How Big is Shaq’s Yacht?

The vessel clocks in at 84 feet in length which actually makes it rather small in the world of millionaire yachts. Most yachts have to reach 120 feet to be considered a superyacht and other celebrity yachts like Jeff Bezos’ Y721 is over 416 feet making it ones of the biggest yachts owned by a celebrity/businessman while Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones has a 357 foot yacht that cost $250 million. Most other celebrities have not spent an alleged $130 million on a yacht, either.

Some sources say that O’Neal’s yacht is just 72 feet as well, but that seems to be the Pershing 72 that the paparazzi snapped pictures of him on in Spain back in 2019, which was a charter and not his own personal yacht.

This photo that Shaq posted himself on Facebook shows him in front of a light colored yacht so let’s assume that’s his legit, actual yacht. Photos of Shaq on or near this exact yacht are actually very rare. Look at this video here which is supposed to be a walkthrough of Shaq’s yacht and see what you notice.

At 0:38 the video tells us his yacht is 84 feet long but the image they show is a different yacht. That’s mint green, the satellite domes are wrong, the railings are wrong, it’s just not the same boat at all. By 0:42 it’s showing us Shaq with a female companion but that’s yet another yacht. This time it’s the yacht he rented in Spain called the Sensation. So it’s no wonder it’s hard to get a bead on any concrete facts about Shaq’s yacht when video walkthroughs are showing you at least 3 different boats claiming that they’re all the same one.

Who Made The Luxury Motor Yacht Owned by Shaquille O’Neal

The information about who made Shaq’s yacht doesn’t seem to be available right now. There are some articles referring to him owning a Pershing 72 but that yacht was the one he chartered in Spain in 2019. The actual type of yacht he owns is not something he seems to have shared publicly and no one else has made any reliable posts about it online.

When Did Shaq Get His Yacht?

Based on Shaq’s own posting of the yacht asking for people to help him name it, it looks like he picked up the yacht in 2018. A lot of stories have been published in 2022 about the yacht as well but these are the ones that cause the real confusion as they include info from so many sources that all seem to get the details wrong or mixed up about when and where he’s had the yacht, not to mention how big it is or what it cost.

What Was the Price of Shaq’s Yacht?

This question is harder to answer than you might think. You get two common answers when you Google Shaq’s yacht. One says it cost about $130 million and another will say about $1.7 million and the strange thing is, neither of those sound right at all.

Shaq has an 80 foot yacht. That’s big but it’s nowhere near $130 million big. Jeff Bezos’s yacht was allegedly $500 million but that is one of the largest in the world and clearly one of the most expensive yachts, too. It features a lot of custom gadgets and tech to help account for the price. Also, the internet seems confident (though it could be very wrong) that Shaq’s net worth is about $400 million. So dropping $130 million on a yacht seems silly. How often do you spend a quarter of all the money you have on a luxury item?

By the same token, $1.7 million is actually low for a yacht of that size. You can get used yachts for that much, but is that what Shaq did? Hard to say, of course, but it seems odd. If nothing else, the $1.7 million number seems more reasonable for an 84 foot yacht from 2018 than a $130 million price tag.

What’s the Interior of Shaq’s Yacht Like?

This is often said to be Shaq’s yacht, but it doesn’t appear to be the same boat.

Shaq’s yacht allegedly features a kitchen, a master suite and 3 state rooms for guests. You may have seen photos taken by paparazzi of Shaq wearing blue swim trunks with some guests in Spain from 2019 but this was not Shaq’s yacht. Instead, it was a charter out of Formentera, Spain. That yacht was a 72 foot Pershing 72 that launched in 2008 and was refit in 2018. It’s called the Sensation and costs about $50,000 a week to charter during the high season. You can rent it yourself if you’re so inclined and you pick a time when it’s free.

The problem with many of the other articles online that detail the features of Shaq’s yacht is that they just can’t be trusted. For instance, one popular description of the yacht indicates that it has 7 double-sized suites, VIP rooms for guests, and three twin luxury cabins. It’s supposed to be able to accommodate 150 people on board. This would also mean that many crew members are required to man the yacht of the former NBA champion and would boost the estimated cost to run it to around $2 million per year or more.

Another description says Shaq’s yacht has a central pool at the end of the deck, along with a drop-down glazed ceiling. There is a bar right in front of the spa pool with sun loungers and bar stools. It’s said the yacht also has two kinds of jacuzzis. Some say he has a piano and an observation area up on the top deck.

Here’s a pair of photos that some sites have claimed are from Shaq’s yacht. That first one is from a yacht called the Pepper XIII that was designed by Westport and was apparently inspired, in part, by the Weimaraner dog breed’s coat. It’s not Shaq’s boat.

The second photo comes from the site of a company that stages yacht interiors for photos and showings. It’s also not Shaq’s yacht. 

Unfortunately no genuine images exist of the inside of Shaq’s yacht. You can barely find pictures of the outside, actually, as he plays  his personal life close to the chest and also has a habit of renting yachts in other places rather than taking his own. 

Was Shaq’s Luxury Yacht Called Free Throw?

There are a lot of sites that say the boat is called Free Throw and at first glance that makes sense. Shaq played ball, it’s a term from playing ball. No big deal, right? Well, there does seem to be a joke involved that most of us who know Shaq’s legacy on the court can see coming.

Shaq was never a man known for his free throw ability, a point not lost on even the big man himself. Shaq asked fans on Facebook after purchasing the yacht what he should name it and one of the early favorites which became a running joke was that he should name it Free Throw because then he could never sink it.

His son Shareef also made a crack about it in a video he posted on Tik Tok that quickly made the rounds in sports and social media back in 2020.

The thing is, in that video, they are definitely not on a big luxury yacht, either. It was just a joke for sure, but it appears to be an entirely different, and smaller, power boat.

The weird thing is that no one seems to have a single photo online of the back of Shaq’s boat that allows us to confirm one way or another what he called it but at least Shaqapulco has a history as it’s what he called his mansion as well, so it seems more reasonable than a joke at his own expense that fans thought up when they were roasting him.

The Bottom Line

There’s very little reliable information out there about Shaq’s yacht. Based on his own Facebook postings it seems like he picked up a yacht in 2018 and that’s when the Free Throw joke popped up.

There’s actually even a possibility that the legendary basketball player doesn’t have a yacht at all. He might have just posted that photo for the sake of engaging his fans to allow them to make jokes. Consider that the only other times Shaq has been seen on a yacht it was a yacht he chartered and not the one he allegedly owns. And when his son Shareef has posted videos of the two of them on social media together on boats it’s not a yacht at all that they’re on. Perhaps this was just a joke that people took seriously and then websites began filling in the details from there. 

Given the limited number of photos available, even if the fan favorite NBA star does have a yacht there’s still very little information to share and that seems slightly suspicious.