1 Sailing-Bigger and Faster, SailGP Back where it all Began In Sydney
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By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP go back to where all of it started in Sydney this weekend and six years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees a brilliant future for the innovative international sailing league.

An Olympic champ and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts coordinated with Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the Oracle software application company, to launch the series with six groups all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which began in Sydney in February 2019 featured just 5 rounds, oke.zone this weekend's race will be the third round of 13 the now 12-strong fleet will contest on the 2025-26 schedule.

"It's just incredible, actually, the uptake and variety 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 wish to get to. So yeah, the future looks great."

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

"We didn't set out to simply appeal to the devoted sailing fan, we attempt to make this sport easy to understand and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts included.

"Most of our fans are not devoted sailors, which is among the reasons why we've grown so quickly. We are appealing to people that much like viewing a race, they don't have to comprehend anything about sailboats."

A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans ended up to view Tom Slingsby's Australia team win the second round of the series in Auckland last month.

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

"The most important thing is the fans watching on broadcast ... however the fan experience on site is also vitally essential. We want fans to come and have an excellent time and see some fantastic racing."

Technological innovation is integral to SailGP and numerous countless information points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for the usage of race organisers, teams and to assist broadcasters enhance the viewer experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is excited about some more innovations coming online as Artificial Intelligence is increasingly utilized to resolve the of information.

"The big development 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 have the ability to browse anywhere they want. That's the future."

There have, archmageriseswiki.com of course, been difficulties over the six years with the 2nd season disrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still sometimes at the grace of wind conditions.

A lack of F50s indicated the French group 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 elements for Coutts is that all but among the groups are, or quickly will be, independently owned or akropolistravel.com run.

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

"We knew that that was the entire method the model was set up, that group owners would have the ability to trade their groups and ideally generate income out of it, but I didn't believe we 'd attain it this early. That's been a nice surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Michael Perry)