By Nick Mulvenney

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

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

While the inaugural season which started 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 just amazing, 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 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 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 finest sailors press the F50 hindering catamarans to their limitations at what are awesome speeds for waterborne vessels.

"We didn't set out to simply appeal to the passionate sailing fan, we attempt to make this sport reasonable and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts added.

"The majority of our fans are not devoted sailors, which is among the reasons that we've grown so rapidly. We are attracting people that similar to watching a race, they do not need to understand anything about sailboats."

A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans ended up to enjoy Tom Slingsby's Australia group win the 2nd round of the series in Auckland last month.

"I think you'll see several 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 ... but the fan experience on website is likewise vitally important. We desire fans to come and have a fun time and see some terrific racing."

Technological innovation is integral to SailGP and hundreds of thousands of information points are passed on from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for accc.rcec.sinica.edu.tw using race organisers, teams 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 used to work through the mountain of information.

"The huge development for us moving 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 group in a race, and be able to 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 sometimes at the mercy of wind conditions.

A lack of F50s implied the French team was unable to 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 disgaeawiki.info 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 quickly will be, independently owned or run.

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

"We understood that that was the entire way the design was set up, that team owners would be able to trade their teams and hopefully earn money out of it, but I didn't believe we 'd attain it this early. That's been a great surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)