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1 Sailing Bigger and Faster, SailGP Back where it all Began In Sydney

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 innovative global sailing league.

An Olympic champ and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts partnered with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software application company, to launch the series with six teams all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which kicked off 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, in fact, the uptake and number 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 great."

The idea 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 best sailors press the F50 hindering catamarans to their limits at what are spectacular speeds for waterborne vessels.

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

"The majority of our fans are not passionate sailors, which is among the reasons why we've grown so quickly. We are appealing to people that similar to watching a race, they do not have to comprehend anything about sailboats."

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

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

"The most important thing is the fans watching on broadcast ... but the fan experience on site is likewise critically important. We desire fans to come and have an excellent time and see some great racing."

Technological innovation is essential to SailGP and numerous thousands of data points are communicated from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for using race organisers, groups and to assist broadcasters enhance the viewer experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is thrilled about some more innovations coming online as Artificial Intelligence is increasingly utilized to resolve the mountain of information.

"The big development 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 ride along with the Australian team in a race, and have the ability to look around wherever they want. That's the future."

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

A lack of F50s meant the French group was not able to complete at this 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 first time this weekend and photorum.eclat-mauve.fr among the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all however one of the teams are, or galgbtqhistoryproject.org soon will be, independently owned or run.

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

"We understood that that was the entire way the model was set up, that group owners would have the ability to trade their teams and hopefully make 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, modifying by Michael Perry)