By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP go back to where all of it began in Sydney this weekend and 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees a brilliant future for the ingenious global sailing league.

An Olympic champion and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts teamed up with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software company, to launch the series with 6 groups all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which began in Sydney in February 2019 included just five rounds, 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 simply remarkable, actually, the uptake and number of events now,” SailGP chief executive 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 contrast is not far from the mark when the world’s finest sailors press the F50 hindering catamarans to their limitations at what are breathtaking speeds for waterborne vessels.

“We didn’t set out to just attract the devoted sailing fan, we try to make this sport reasonable and explainable for all sports fans,” Coutts added.

“The majority of our fans are not passionate sailors, and that is among the reasons that we have actually grown so quickly. We are attracting people that much like enjoying a race, they do not need to understand anything about sailboats.”

A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans turned out to watch Tom Slingsby’s Australia team win the 2nd 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, a 62-year-old New Zealander.

“The most important thing is the fans enjoying on broadcast … however the fan experience on site is likewise essential. We want fans to come and have a fun time and see some excellent racing.”

Technological development is integral to SailGP and hundreds of thousands of information points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for garagesale.es using 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 progressively employed to resolve the mountain of information.

“The big development for us going forward is the 360 degree view from on board the boat, with listening to the team comms,” he said.

“The audience will be taken on board and trip in addition to the Australian team in a race, and have the ability to browse wherever they want. That’s the future.”

There have, of course, been challenges over the 6 years with the second season disrupted by the COVID pandemic and garagesale.es race days still sometimes at the mercy of wind conditions.

A scarcity of F50s suggested the French group was unable to complete 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 for that for the very first time this weekend and among the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all but one of the groups are, asteroidsathome.net or soon will be, independently owned or run.

“These groups are now costing $50 million, I would never ever have predicted that this early on,” said Coutts, who prepares to bring another number of teams on board next year.

“We understood that that was the entire method the design was set up, that team owners would have the ability to trade their groups and ideally generate income out of it, but I didn’t think we ’d attain it this early. That’s been a good surprise.” (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)