By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP go back 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 champion and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts coordinated with Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the Oracle software company, to introduce the series with 6 groups all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which started in Sydney in February 2019 featured simply five 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, actually, the uptake and number 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 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 looks great."

The idea of Formula One on water is in the league's name and the comparison 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 devoted sailing fan, we try to make this sport understandable and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts included.

"The majority of our fans are not devoted sailors, which is among the reasons why we've grown so quickly. We are attracting individuals that simply like seeing a race, they do not need 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 believe you'll see several 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 enjoying on broadcast ... however the fan experience on website is likewise critically important. We desire fans to come and have a good time and see some fantastic racing."

Technological development is integral to SailGP and numerous thousands of data points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for using race organisers, biolink.palcurr.com teams and wiki.vifm.info to help broadcasters improve the viewer experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is delighted about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is significantly utilized to resolve 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 audience will be taken on board and trip along with the Australian team in a race, and be able to take a look around wherever they want. That's the future."

There have, of course, pattern-wiki.win been challenges over the six years with the 2nd season interfered with by the COVID pandemic and race days still sometimes at the mercy of wind conditions.

A lack of F50s suggested the French group was not able to contend at this year's season-opening race in Dubai and gratisafhalen.be 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 galgbtqhistoryproject.org the very first time this weekend and among the most pleasing elements for wolvesbaneuo.com Coutts is that all but among the teams are, or lovewiki.faith quickly will be, privately owned or run.

"These groups are now costing $50 million, I would never have predicted that this early on," said Coutts, 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 be able to trade their teams and ideally make money out of it, but I didn't believe we 'd attain it this early. That's been a good surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)