By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP returns to where it all began in Sydney this weekend and 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees a brilliant future for the ingenious global sailing league.

An Olympic champ and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts partnered with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software application company, to launch the series with six teams all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which began in Sydney in February 2019 featured just 5 rounds, this weekend's race will be the 3rd 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 appearances 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 best sailors press the F50 foiling 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 reasonable and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts added.

"Most of our fans are not devoted sailors, and that is among the reasons that we've grown so quickly. We are appealing to individuals that similar to enjoying a race, they don't have to comprehend anything about sailboats."

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

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

"The most crucial thing is the fans viewing on broadcast ... however the fan experience on website is also essential. We desire fans to come and have a fun time and see some fantastic racing."

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

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is delighted about some more innovations coming online as Artificial Intelligence is progressively utilized to overcome the mountain of data.

"The big development 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 along with the Australian group in a race, and have the ability to browse wherever they desire. That's the future."

There have, of course, been difficulties over the 6 years with the second season interrupted by the and race days still often at the mercy of wind conditions.

A scarcity of F50s indicated the French group was not able to compete at this year's season-opening race in Dubai and trademarketclassifieds.com damage to the boat once they got it ruled them out of the Auckland leg.

The complete fleet of 12 boats will for that reason race for the very first time this weekend and among the most pleasing elements for akropolistravel.com Coutts is that all but one of the teams are, or soon will be, independently owned or run.

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

"We understood that that was the entire method the model was set up, that team owners would be able to trade their groups and hopefully earn 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, modifying by Michael Perry)