By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) – SailGP go back to where all of it started in Sydney this weekend and gratisafhalen.be 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees a bright future for wiki.vst.hs-furtwangen.de the ingenious worldwide sailing league.

An Olympic champ and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts teamed up with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software company, humanlove.stream to release the series with 6 teams 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 3rd round of 13 the now 12-strong fleet will contest on the 2025-26 schedule.

«It’s just fantastic, really, 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 in the league’s name and the comparison 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 devoted sailing fan, we attempt to make this sport understandable and explainable for all sports fans,» Coutts added.

«Most of our fans are not avid sailors, and that is among the reasons we’ve grown so rapidly. We are appealing to people that much like viewing a race, they don’t need to comprehend anything about sailboats.»

A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans turned out to view Tom Slingsby’s Australia team win the 2nd 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, a 62-year-old New Zealander.

«The most crucial thing is the fans viewing on broadcast … however the fan experience on site is also extremely essential. We want fans to come and have a fun time and see some terrific racing.»

Technological development is integral to SailGP and numerous thousands of data points are communicated from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for the usage of race organisers, groups and thatswhathappened.wiki 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 information.

«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 viewer will be taken on board and trip together with the Australian team in a race, and have the ability to browse any place they desire. That’s the future.»

There have, of course, been obstacles over the six years with the 2nd season interrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still often at the grace of wind conditions.

A scarcity of F50s implied the French group was unable to complete 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 prawattasao.awardspace.info that reason race for asteroidsathome.net the very first time this weekend and among the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all but among the groups are, or soon will be, privately owned or run.

«These groups are now offering for $50 million, I would never ever have actually anticipated that this early,» said Coutts, who plans to bring another number of teams on board next year.

«We understood that that was the entire way the design was established, that group owners would be able to trade their groups 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, editing by Michael Perry)