By Nick Mulvenney

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

An Olympic champion and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts teamed up with Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the Oracle software business, videochatforum.ro 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 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 simply amazing, in fact, 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 wish to get to. So yeah, the future appearances 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 best sailors press the F50 foiling catamarans to their limits at what are breathtaking speeds for waterborne vessels.

"We didn't set out to simply appeal to the passionate 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, which's one of the reasons we've grown so rapidly. We are interesting individuals that similar to watching a race, they do not have to understand anything about sailboats."

A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans turned out to view Tom Slingsby's Australia group win the second 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 important thing is the fans watching on broadcast ... however the fan experience on website is also essential. We desire fans to come and have a fun time and see some excellent racing."

Technological development is important to SailGP and hundreds of thousands of data points are communicated from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for using race organisers, teams and to assist broadcasters improve the viewer experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is delighted about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is significantly employed to work through the mountain of data.

"The huge advancement for us going forward is the 360 degree view from on board the boat, with listening to the team 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 browse wherever they want. That's the future."

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

A scarcity of F50s suggested the French group 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 complete fleet of 12 boats will for that reason race for the very first time this weekend and one of the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all however among the teams are, or soon will be, privately owned or run.

"These teams are now costing $50 million, I would never ever have actually predicted that this early," said Coutts, who prepares to bring another couple of teams on board next year.

"We understood that that was the entire way the design was established, that team owners would have the ability to trade their teams and ideally earn money out of it, however I didn't think we 'd attain it this early. That's been a nice surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Michael Perry)