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By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, archmageriseswiki.com Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP go back to where it all began in Sydney this weekend and wiki.die-karte-bitte.de six years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees a brilliant future for memorial-genweb.org the innovative global sailing league.

An Olympic champ and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts coordinated with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software business, bphomesteading.com to release the series with six teams all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which began in Sydney in February 2019 included simply five rounds, this weekend's race will be the 3rd round of 13 the now 12-strong fleet will contest on the 2025-26 schedule.

"It's simply amazing, in fact, the uptake and number of occasions now," SailGP president Coutts told Reuters at the Sydney Opera House on Friday.

"We're certainly sitting at 13, and aiming to increase that over the next seasons to somewhere around 20. If you compare that to Formula One that has 24, that's sort of where we desire to get to. So yeah, the future appearances good."

The idea of Formula One on water is implicit in the league's name and the contrast is not far from the mark when the world's best sailors push the F50 hindering catamarans to their limits at what are awesome speeds for waterborne vessels.

"We didn't set out to just interest the avid sailing fan, we try to make this sport understandable and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts included.

"The majority of our fans are not passionate sailors, which's one of the reasons we've grown so quickly. We are attracting individuals that similar to enjoying a race, they don't need to comprehend anything about sailboats."

A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans ended up to watch Tom Slingsby's Australia group win the 2nd round of the series in Auckland last month.

"I think you'll see several of our occasions this year now like that, perhaps even topping that," said Coutts, a 62-year-old New Zealander.

"The most crucial thing is the fans viewing on broadcast ... however the fan experience on site is also extremely essential. We desire fans to come and have a fun time and see some great racing."

Technological innovation is integral to SailGP and numerous thousands of information points are passed on from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for the usage of race organisers, teams and to help broadcasters enhance the audience .

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is delighted about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is progressively utilized to overcome the mountain of information.

"The big advancement for us going forward is the 360 degree view from on board the boat, with listening to the group comms," he said.

"The audience will be taken on board and ride along with the Australian group in a race, and be able to take a look around anywhere they want. That's the future."

There have, of course, been challenges over the 6 years with the 2nd season disrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still in some cases at the mercy of wind conditions.

A scarcity of F50s implied the French team was not able to compete at this year's season-opening race in Dubai and damage to the boat once they got it ruled them out of the Auckland leg.

The complete fleet of 12 boats will for that reason race for the very first time this weekend and one of the most pleasing aspects for surgiteams.com Coutts is that all however one of the groups are, or quickly will be, independently owned or run.

"These groups are now costing $50 million, I would never have actually anticipated that this at an early stage," said Coutts, who prepares to bring another couple of teams on board next year.

"We understood that that was the entire method the design was set up, that team owners would be able to trade their teams and hopefully make cash out of it, but I didn't think we 'd attain it this early. That's been a good surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Michael Perry)