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By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP returns to where everything started in Sydney this weekend and 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees a bright future for the innovative worldwide sailing league.

An Olympic champ and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts partnered with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software application 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 simply 5 rounds, photorum.eclat-mauve.fr 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, really, the uptake and number of events 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 desire 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 comparison is not far from the mark when the world's finest sailors push the F50 hindering catamarans to their limitations at what are spectacular speeds for waterborne vessels.

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

"Most of our fans are not avid sailors, which's one of the reasons that we've grown so rapidly. We are interesting individuals that similar to watching a race, they don't 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 second round of the series in Auckland last month.

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

"The most important thing is the fans watching on broadcast ... however the fan experience on website is also vitally crucial. We want fans to come and have a good time and see some terrific racing."

Technological innovation is important to SailGP and hundreds of thousands of data points are passed on from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for using race organisers, groups and to assist broadcasters enhance the audience experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is delighted about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is increasingly utilized to overcome the mountain of information.

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

"The audience will be taken on board and ride along with the Australian group in a race, and be able to browse anywhere they want. That's the future."

There have, of course, been obstacles 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 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 complete fleet of 12 boats will therefore race for the very first time this weekend and among the most for Coutts is that all but one of the teams are, or quickly will be, privately owned or valetinowiki.racing run.

"These teams are now offering for $50 million, I would never have actually predicted that this early on," said Coutts, who prepares to bring another couple of groups on board next year.

"We understood that that was the entire method the model was set up, that group owners would be able to trade their teams and hopefully earn money out of it, however I didn't believe we 'd attain it this early. That's been a nice surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)