By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP go back to where everything began in Sydney this weekend and 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees an intense future for the ingenious international sailing league.

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

While the inaugural season which kicked off in Sydney in February 2019 included just 5 rounds, this weekend's race will be the third round of 13 the now 12-strong fleet will object to on the 2025-26 schedule.

"It's just remarkable, in fact, the uptake and variety of occasions now," SailGP chief executive 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 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 great."

The 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 finest sailors push 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 avid 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 we have actually grown so rapidly. We are attracting individuals that similar to viewing a race, they don't have to understand anything about sailboats."

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

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

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

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

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is delighted about some more innovations coming online as Artificial Intelligence is significantly employed to resolve 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 in addition to the Australian group in a race, and have the ability to browse wherever they desire. That's the future."

There have, of course, 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 team was not able to compete 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 that reason race for the first time this weekend and among the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all however one of the teams are, or quickly will be, independently owned or run.

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

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