By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP go back to where everything started in Sydney this weekend and six years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees an intense future for the innovative international sailing league.

An Olympic champion and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts teamed up with Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the Oracle software business, to launch the series with six teams all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which began 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 contest on the 2025-26 schedule.

"It's just remarkable, actually, the uptake and variety of occasions 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 somewhere around 20. If you compare that to Formula One that has 24, that's sort of where we want to get to. So yeah, the future appearances good."

The concept of Formula One on water is implicit in the league's name and annunciogratis.net the is not far from the mark when the world's finest sailors push the F50 hindering catamarans to their limitations at what are awesome speeds for waterborne vessels.

"We didn't set out to just interest 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 passionate sailors, and that's one of the reasons that we have actually grown so rapidly. We are interesting individuals that similar to viewing a race, they don't need to understand anything about sailboats."

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

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

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

Technological development is essential to SailGP and hundreds of countless information points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for making use of race organisers, teams and to assist broadcasters enhance the viewer experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is thrilled about some more innovations coming online as Artificial Intelligence is progressively employed to work through 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 group comms," he said.

"The viewer will be taken on board and trip along with the Australian team in a race, and have the ability to take a look around anywhere they desire. That's the future."

There have, obviously, been challenges over the 6 years with the second season interfered with by the COVID pandemic and race days still often at the grace of wind conditions.

A shortage of F50s suggested the French group was not able 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 complete fleet of 12 boats will therefore race for the very first time this weekend and one of the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all but among the groups are, or quickly will be, independently owned or run.

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

"We understood that that was the whole method the model was set up, that group owners would be able to trade their groups and ideally generate income 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)