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By Nick Mulvenney

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

An Olympic champ and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts partnered with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software business, to launch the series with six teams all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which started 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 simply amazing, really, the uptake and variety 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 someplace around 20. If you compare that to Formula One that has 24, that's sort of where we want to get to. So yeah, the future appearances excellent."

The concept 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 best sailors press the F50 foiling catamarans to their limits at what are awesome speeds for waterborne vessels.

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

"The majority of our fans are not avid sailors, and that's one of the factors why we have actually grown so quickly. We are attracting individuals that much like seeing 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 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 crucial thing is the fans seeing on broadcast ... however the fan experience on website is likewise vitally essential. We desire fans to come and have a good time and see some fantastic racing."

Technological development is integral to SailGP and hundreds of countless information points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for using race organisers, teams and townshipmarket.co.za to assist broadcasters improve the viewer experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is delighted about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is significantly used to work through the mountain of data.

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

"The viewer will be taken on board and ride together with the Australian team in a race, and be able to browse anywhere they desire. That's the future."

There have, obviously, been challenges over the 6 years with the 2nd season interrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still in some cases at the mercy of wind conditions.

A scarcity of F50s indicated the French team was unable to contend 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 parentingliteracy.com one of the most pleasing aspects for Coutts is that all however among the groups are, or soon will be, privately owned or funsilo.date run.

"These teams are now offering for $50 million, I would never ever have 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 whole way the model was established, that team owners would have the ability to trade their teams and hopefully make cash out of it, however I didn't believe we 'd attain it this early. That's been a good surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Michael Perry)