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 sailing league.

An Olympic champion and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts coordinated with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software application company, to introduce the series with six groups all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which started in Sydney in February 2019 featured simply 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 fantastic, really, 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 someplace 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 looks excellent."

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 push the F50 foiling catamarans to their limits at what are spectacular speeds for waterborne vessels.

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

"Most of our fans are not passionate sailors, which is among the reasons why we've grown so rapidly. We are interesting people that simply like viewing a race, they do not have to comprehend anything about sailboats."

A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans turned out 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 occasions this year now like that, possibly 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 likewise essential. We want fans to come and have a good time and see some terrific racing."

Technological innovation is essential to SailGP and numerous thousands of information points are communicated 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 delighted about some more innovations coming online as Artificial Intelligence is progressively utilized to work through the mountain of data.

"The huge development for us moving forward is the 360 degree view from on board the boat, with listening to the group comms," he said.

"The audience will be taken on board and ride in addition to the Australian team in a race, and have the ability to look around any place they desire. That's the future."

There have, naturally, been obstacles over the six years with the second season disrupted by the COVID pandemic and valetinowiki.racing race days still sometimes at the grace of wind conditions.

A lack of F50s implied the French team 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 full fleet of 12 boats will therefore race for the very first time this weekend and among the most pleasing elements for links.gtanet.com.br Coutts is that all however among the teams are, or quickly will be, independently owned or run.

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

"We knew that that was the whole way the design was established, that group owners would have the ability to trade their groups and hopefully generate income out of it, however I didn't think we 'd attain it this early. That's been a nice surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)