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By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, asteroidsathome.net Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP go back to where it all began in Sydney this weekend and wolvesbaneuo.com 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees a bright future for the innovative international sailing league.

An Olympic champion and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts coordinated with Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the Oracle software application company, to launch the series with 6 teams all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which started in Sydney in February 2019 included simply five rounds, vmeste-so-vsemi.ru 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 simply incredible, in fact, the uptake and number of events now," SailGP chief executive 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 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 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 best sailors press the F50 hindering catamarans to their limitations at what are awesome 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 avid sailors, which's one of the reasons we have actually grown so rapidly. We are interesting individuals that similar to seeing a race, they don't need to understand anything about sailboats."

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

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

"The most essential thing is the fans viewing on broadcast ... but the fan experience on site is also vitally important. We desire fans to come and have a fun time and see some great racing."

Technological innovation is integral to SailGP and numerous countless data points are passed on from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for making use of race organisers, groups and to help broadcasters enhance the viewer experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is thrilled about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is significantly employed to work through 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 team comms," he said.

"The viewer will be taken on board and trip in addition to the Australian group in a race, and be able to take a look around anywhere they desire. That's the future."

There have, wifidb.science obviously, been over the six years with the second season interfered with by the COVID pandemic and race days still often at the mercy of wind conditions.

A shortage of F50s implied the French group was unable to contend at this year's season-opening race in Dubai and nerdgaming.science 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 suvenir51.ru one of the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all but among the teams are, or soon will be, privately owned or run.

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

"We understood that that was the entire method the design was set up, that group owners would be able to trade their groups and ideally 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)