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 the ingenious global sailing league.

An Olympic champ and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts coordinated with Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder 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 five 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 just incredible, actually, the uptake and variety of events 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 want to get to. So yeah, the future looks excellent.”

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 best sailors press the F50 to their limitations at what are breathtaking speeds for waterborne vessels.

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

“Most of our fans are not devoted sailors, and that is among the reasons why we’ve grown so rapidly. We are attracting people that similar to viewing a race, they do not need to understand anything about sailboats.”

A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans ended up to see Tom Slingsby’s Australia team win the second round of the series in Auckland last month.

“I believe 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 crucial thing is the fans seeing on broadcast … but the fan experience on website is also essential. We desire fans to come and have a fantastic time and see some excellent racing.”

Technological innovation is integral to SailGP and hundreds of countless data points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for the use of race organisers, groups and to assist broadcasters enhance the viewer experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is delighted about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is increasingly employed to work through 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 viewer will be taken on board and trip together with the Australian team in a race, and be able to look around anywhere they desire. That’s the future.”

There have, of course, been difficulties over the six years with the second season interfered with by the COVID pandemic and race days still often at the mercy of wind conditions.

A scarcity of F50s meant 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 therefore race for the very first time this weekend and among the most pleasing aspects for Coutts is that all but among the groups are, or quickly will be, independently owned or run.

“These teams are now costing $50 million, I would never ever have forecasted that this early on,” said Coutts, king-wifi.win who plans to bring another couple of groups on board next year.

“We understood that that was the entire way the design was established, that group owners would have the ability to trade their groups and hopefully make cash out of it, but I didn’t think we ’d attain it this early. That’s been a great surprise.” (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)