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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 bright future for the ingenious worldwide sailing league.

An Olympic champion and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts teamed up with Larry Ellison, cadizpedia.wikanda.es the billionaire founder of the Oracle software application company, to introduce the series with 6 groups 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 contest on the 2025-26 schedule.

"It's simply remarkable, really, the uptake and number of occasions now," SailGP chief executive 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 idea 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 press the F50 hindering catamarans to their limits at what are spectacular speeds for waterborne vessels.

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

"Most of our fans are not passionate sailors, which is among the reasons we have actually grown so quickly. We are attracting people that similar to viewing a race, they don't have to comprehend anything about sailboats."

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

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

"The most crucial thing is the fans viewing on broadcast ... however the fan experience on website is also critically important. We desire fans to come and have a fun time and see some excellent racing."

Technological development is important to SailGP and hundreds of countless information points are communicated from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for systemcheck-wiki.de the use of race organisers, teams and oke.zone to help broadcasters enhance the audience experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is thrilled about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is progressively utilized to work through the mountain of data.

"The big advancement 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 have the ability to browse anywhere they desire. That's the future."

There have, of course, been over the six years with the 2nd season interrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still often at the grace of wind conditions.

A shortage of F50s suggested the French team was not able 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 complete fleet of 12 boats will for that reason race for lespoetesbizarres.free.fr the first time this weekend and one of the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all however one of the groups are, or quickly will be, independently owned or run.

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

"We knew that that was the entire way the design was established, that group owners would be able to trade their teams and hopefully generate income out of it, however I didn't believe we 'd attain it this early. That's been a great surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)