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By Nick Mulvenney

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

An Olympic champion and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts coordinated with Larry Ellison, wiki.myamens.com the billionaire creator of the Oracle software application company, to introduce the series with six groups all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which started in Sydney in February 2019 featured just five rounds, asteroidsathome.net 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, actually, the uptake and variety of occasions 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 wish 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 contrast is not far from the mark when the world's finest sailors press the F50 foiling catamarans to their limitations at what are breathtaking 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 passionate sailors, which is among the reasons that we have actually grown so rapidly. We are interesting people that much like viewing a race, they don't have to comprehend anything about sailboats."

A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans ended up to enjoy Tom Slingsby's Australia team 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 viewing on broadcast ... but the fan experience on site is also extremely crucial. We want fans to come and have a fun time and see some great racing."

Technological development is important to SailGP and numerous thousands of data points are communicated from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for using race organisers, groups and to help broadcasters enhance the audience experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is delighted about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is significantly used to overcome 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 audience will be taken on board and trip together with the Australian group in a race, and have the ability to take a look around any place they want. That's the future."

There have, obviously, been obstacles over the 6 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 implied 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 among the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all however one of the groups are, or quickly will be, independently owned or lespoetesbizarres.free.fr run.

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

"We understood that that was the whole method the model was established, that group owners would be able to trade their groups and ideally make money out of it, however I didn't believe we 'd attain it this early. That's been a great surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Michael Perry)