Sailing-Bigger and Faster, SailGP Back where all of it Began In Sydney
By Nick Mulvenney
SYDNEY, forum.altaycoins.com Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP go back to where everything started in Sydney this weekend and 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees an intense future for the ingenious global sailing league.
An Olympic champion and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts teamed up with Larry Ellison, opentx.cz the billionaire founder of the Oracle software company, to launch the series with 6 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 object to on the 2025-26 schedule.
"It's just remarkable, in fact, the uptake and number of events 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 somewhere 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 concept 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 foiling catamarans to their limitations at what are spectacular speeds for waterborne vessels.
"We didn't set out to simply interest the avid 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's one of the reasons we have actually grown so quickly. We are interesting individuals that much like viewing a race, they don't need to comprehend anything about sailboats."
A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans ended up to enjoy Tom Slingsby's Australia team win the second round of the series in Auckland last month.
"I believe you'll see several of our occasions this year now like that, perhaps even topping that," said Coutts, a 62 New Zealander.
"The most important thing is the fans seeing on broadcast ... however the fan experience on website is likewise essential. We want fans to come and have a good time and see some excellent racing."
Technological innovation is important to SailGP and numerous thousands of data points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for using race organisers, groups and yidtravel.com to help broadcasters improve the viewer experience.
360 DEGREE VIEW
Coutts is excited about some more innovations coming online as Artificial Intelligence is significantly utilized to resolve the mountain of data.
"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 any place they want. That's the future."
There have, morphomics.science of course, been challenges over the six years with the 2nd season disrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still sometimes at the mercy of wind conditions.
A lack of F50s implied the French group was not able to complete 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 very first time this weekend and one of the most pleasing aspects for Coutts is that all but among the teams are, or soon will be, privately owned or run.
"These groups are now costing $50 million, I would never ever have forecasted that this at an early stage," said Coutts, who plans to bring another number of groups on board next year.
"We understood that that was the whole way the design 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 nice surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)