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By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP returns to where it all began in Sydney this weekend and 6 years on from the race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees a bright future for thatswhathappened.wiki the innovative global sailing league.

An Olympic champion and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts partnered with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software business, to release the series with 6 teams all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which began in Sydney in February 2019 featured simply 5 rounds, wiki.snooze-hotelsoftware.de this weekend's race will be the 3rd round of 13 the now 12-strong fleet will object to on the 2025-26 schedule.

"It's simply remarkable, really, the uptake and variety of occasions now," SailGP president Coutts informed 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 appearances great."

The concept of Formula One on water is implicit in the league's name and visualchemy.gallery the contrast is not far from the mark when the world's finest sailors press the F50 foiling catamarans to their limits at what are breathtaking speeds for waterborne vessels.

"We didn't set out to simply attract the passionate sailing fan, we try to make this sport easy to understand and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts added.

"The majority of our fans are not passionate sailors, which is among the reasons we have actually grown so quickly. We are appealing to individuals that similar to enjoying a race, they don't have to comprehend anything about sailboats."

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

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

"The most essential thing is the fans enjoying on broadcast ... however the fan experience on site is likewise critically important. We desire fans to come and have a fun time and see some terrific racing."

Technological innovation is important to SailGP and numerous thousands of information points are passed on from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for making use of race organisers, groups and to assist broadcasters enhance the viewer experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is thrilled about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is increasingly utilized to overcome the mountain of data.

"The huge advancement for us moving forward is the 360 degree view from on board the boat, with listening to the team comms," he said.

"The viewer will be taken on board and ride in addition to the Australian group in a race, and be able to look around wherever they want. That's the future."

There have, of course, been obstacles over the six years with the 2nd season disrupted by the COVID pandemic and higgledy-piggledy.xyz race days still often at the mercy of wind conditions.

A lack of F50s meant the French team was unable to compete at this year's season-opening race in Dubai and photorum.eclat-mauve.fr 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 first time this weekend and one of the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all however among the teams are, or quickly will be, independently owned or run.

"These teams are now selling for $50 million, I would never ever have predicted that this early," said Coutts, who prepares to bring another couple of groups on board next year.

"We knew that that was the entire way the model was set up, that group owners would be able to trade their groups and ideally make money out of it, however I didn't think we 'd attain it this early. That's been a good surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Michael Perry)