By Nick Mulvenney

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

An Olympic champion and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts partnered with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software application business, to launch the series with 6 groups all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which kicked off in Sydney in February 2019 included simply five rounds, this weekend's race will be the third round of 13 the now 12-strong fleet will object to on the 2025-26 schedule.

"It's simply remarkable, in fact, 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 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 oke.zone 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 breathtaking speeds for waterborne vessels.

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

"Most of our fans are not devoted sailors, and that is among the reasons we've grown so quickly. We are appealing to individuals that much like viewing a race, they do not need to comprehend anything about sailboats."

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

"I think you'll see several of our events this year now like that, perhaps even topping that," said Coutts, asteroidsathome.net a 62-year-old New Zealander.

"The most crucial thing is the fans watching on broadcast ... but the fan experience on site is also essential. We want fans to come and have a good time and see some great racing."

Technological development is integral to SailGP and numerous countless information points are communicated from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for hikvisiondb.webcam the usage of race organisers, groups and to assist broadcasters improve the audience experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is thrilled about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is progressively employed to overcome the mountain of information.

"The huge advancement for us going 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 in addition to the Australian team in a race, and be able to take a look around wherever they want. That's the future."

There have, naturally, been difficulties over the six years with the second season disrupted by the COVID pandemic and galgbtqhistoryproject.org race days still in some cases at the grace of wind conditions.

A shortage of F50s implied the French team was unable to compete 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 akropolistravel.com that reason race for the first time this weekend and one of the most pleasing aspects for Coutts is that all but among the groups are, or quickly will be, privately owned or run.

"These teams are now selling for $50 million, I would never have predicted that this early," said Coutts, who plans to bring another number of teams on board next year.

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