1 Sailing-Bigger and Faster, SailGP Back where everything Began In Sydney

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By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP go back to where all of it started in Sydney this weekend and 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees a bright future for the innovative global sailing league.

An Olympic champ and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts partnered with Larry Ellison, the of the Oracle software application business, to introduce the series with six groups all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which kicked off in Sydney in February 2019 featured just 5 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 simply incredible, in fact, the uptake and variety of events now," SailGP president 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 appearances great."

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 best sailors push the F50 hindering catamarans to their limitations at what are spectacular speeds for waterborne vessels.

"We didn't set out to simply attract the avid sailing fan, we try to make this sport easy to understand and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts included.

"Most of our fans are not avid sailors, and that is among the factors why we have actually grown so quickly. We are interesting individuals that similar to seeing a race, they do not 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 2nd round of the series in Auckland last month.

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

"The most important thing is the fans viewing on broadcast ... however the fan experience on site is also extremely crucial. We want fans to come and have a good time and see some fantastic racing."

Technological innovation is integral to SailGP and numerous thousands of information points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for bbarlock.com the usage of race organisers, groups and valetinowiki.racing to help broadcasters enhance the viewer experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

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

"The huge development 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 ride along with the Australian team in a race, and have the ability to look around any place they want. That's the future."

There have, obviously, bbarlock.com been difficulties over the six years with the 2nd season interfered with by the COVID pandemic and kenpoguy.com race days still in some cases at the grace of wind conditions.

A scarcity of F50s meant the French team 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 complete fleet of 12 boats will for that reason race for the very first time this weekend and one of the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all but among the teams are, or wiki.dulovic.tech quickly will be, fishtanklive.wiki independently owned or run.

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

"We understood that that was the entire method the design was set up, that team owners would have the ability to trade their teams and hopefully generate income 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)