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 bright future for the ingenious global sailing league.

An Olympic champion and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts coordinated with Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the Oracle software business, to release the series with 6 teams all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which began in Sydney in February 2019 included just 5 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 incredible, 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 desire to get to. So yeah, the future looks good."

The idea 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 simply interest the passionate sailing fan, we attempt to make this sport understandable and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts added.

"Most of our fans are not devoted sailors, which's one of the reasons we have actually grown so quickly. We are interesting individuals that simply like viewing a race, they do not need to understand anything about sailboats."

A bumper crowd of 25,000 fans ended up to enjoy Tom Slingsby's Australia group win the second 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 crucial thing is the fans enjoying on broadcast ... however the fan experience on site is also essential. We want fans to come and have a fantastic time and see some excellent racing."

Technological innovation is integral to SailGP and hundreds of thousands of data points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for making use of race organisers, teams and to help broadcasters enhance the audience experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is excited about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is significantly used 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 ride together with the Australian group in a race, and have the ability to look around any place they want. That's the future."

There have, wikibase.imfd.cl obviously, pattern-wiki.win been difficulties over the 6 years with the 2nd season disrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still in some cases at the mercy of wind conditions.

A lack of F50s meant the French group 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 first time this weekend and one of the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all however among the groups are, or soon will be, privately owned or run.

"These teams are now costing $50 million, I would never ever have anticipated that this at an early stage," said Coutts, who plans to bring another number of groups on board next year.

"We knew that that was the entire way the model was set up, that team owners would have the ability to trade their groups and hopefully earn money out of it, but I didn't think we 'd attain it this early. That's been a good surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Michael Perry)