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By Nick Mulvenney

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

An Olympic champ and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts teamed up with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software application business, to introduce the series with six groups all owned by the league.

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

"It's just fantastic, in fact, the uptake and number of occasions now," SailGP chief executive Coutts told at the Sydney Opera House on Friday.

"We're certainly sitting at 13, and aiming to increase that over the next seasons to someplace 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 looks good."

The concept 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 finest sailors push 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 attempt to make this sport reasonable and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts added.

"The majority of our fans are not avid sailors, and that's one of the factors why we've grown so rapidly. We are interesting people that much like viewing a race, they do not 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 second round of the series in Auckland last month.

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

"The most important thing is the fans seeing on broadcast ... but the fan experience on website is also extremely crucial. We want fans to come and have a fun time and see some great racing."

Technological innovation is essential to SailGP and numerous thousands of information points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for the usage of race organisers, teams and to assist broadcasters improve the audience experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is delighted about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is increasingly used to resolve the mountain of information.

"The huge 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 in addition to the Australian group in a race, and be able to look around anywhere they want. That's the future."

There have, naturally, wiki.vst.hs-furtwangen.de been difficulties over the 6 years with the 2nd season interfered with by the COVID pandemic and race days still often at the mercy of wind conditions.

A shortage of F50s suggested 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 full fleet of 12 boats will therefore race for the very first time this weekend and among the most pleasing aspects for geohashing.site Coutts is that all but one of the groups are, or quickly will be, independently owned or run.

"These teams are now offering for $50 million, I would never have anticipated that this early," said Coutts, who prepares to bring another number of teams on board next year.

"We understood that that was the whole method the design was established, that team owners would be able to trade their groups and hopefully earn money out of it, however I didn't think we 'd attain it this early. That's been a great surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)