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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 bright future for coastalplainplants.org the innovative global sailing league.

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

While the inaugural season which began in Sydney in February 2019 included just 5 rounds, 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 just remarkable, actually, the uptake and number 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 someplace 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 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 finest sailors press the F50 foiling catamarans to their limitations at what are awesome speeds for waterborne vessels.

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

"Most of our fans are not passionate sailors, which's one of the reasons that we have actually grown so quickly. We are interesting people that similar to viewing a race, they do not have to understand anything about sailboats."

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

"I think you'll see numerous of our occasions this year now like that, perhaps 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 site is likewise essential. We desire fans to come and have a great time and see some fantastic racing."

Technological development is important to SailGP and numerous countless information points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for the use of race organisers, videochatforum.ro teams and to help broadcasters enhance the viewer experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is excited about some more innovations coming online as Artificial Intelligence is significantly employed 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 audience will be taken on board and trip along with the Australian team in a race, and have the ability to browse wherever they want. That's the future."

There have, wiki.rolandradio.net naturally, been obstacles over the six years with the second season interfered with by the COVID pandemic and online-learning-initiative.org race days still in some cases at the grace of wind conditions.

A lack of F50s suggested the French team 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 reason race for the very first time this weekend and among the most pleasing aspects for Coutts is that all but one of the teams are, or quickly will be, independently owned or run.

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

"We understood that that was the entire method the design was set up, that group owners would have the ability to trade their teams 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)

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