By Nick Mulvenney

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

An Olympic champion and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts partnered with Larry Ellison, fraternityofshadows.com the billionaire founder of the Oracle software application company, to release the series with six teams all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which began in Sydney in February 2019 featured just five rounds, engel-und-waisen.de 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 incredible, really, 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 want to get to. So yeah, the future looks good."

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 breathtaking speeds for waterborne vessels.

"We didn't set out to just appeal to the devoted sailing fan, we try to make this sport understandable and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts included.

"Most of our fans are not devoted sailors, and that is among the reasons that we have actually grown so rapidly. We are interesting people that similar to viewing a race, they don't need to comprehend anything about sailboats."

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

"I believe you'll see numerous 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 likewise essential. We desire fans to come and have a good time and see some terrific racing."

Technological innovation is integral to SailGP and numerous countless information points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for the usage of race organisers, teams and to help broadcasters improve the audience 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 big advancement for us moving forward is the 360 degree view from on board the boat, with listening to the group 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 look around anywhere they desire. That's the future."

There have, of course, been difficulties over the 6 years with the second season disrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still in some cases at the grace of wind conditions.

A scarcity of F50s suggested 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 yogaasanas.science among the most pleasing aspects for wolvesbaneuo.com Coutts is that all but one of the groups are, or soon will be, independently owned or run.

"These groups are now costing $50 million, I would never ever have actually predicted that this early," said Coutts, who plans 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 groups and hopefully generate income out of it, but I didn't believe we 'd attain it this early. That's been a great surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Michael Perry)