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By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP returns to where everything began in Sydney this weekend and ratemywifey.com 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees an intense future for the innovative worldwide sailing league.

An Olympic champ and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts teamed up with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software 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 simply 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 simply remarkable, 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 want 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 press the F50 hindering catamarans to their limitations at what are spectacular speeds for waterborne vessels.

"We didn't set out to just attract the passionate sailing fan, we attempt to make this sport reasonable and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts included.

"The majority of our fans are not passionate sailors, and that's one of the reasons we have actually grown so quickly. We are attracting individuals that much like watching a race, they do not need to understand anything about sailboats."

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

Technological innovation is to SailGP and hundreds of countless information points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for using race organisers, teams and to help broadcasters improve the audience experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is thrilled about some more innovations coming online as Artificial Intelligence is significantly employed 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 wherever they want. That's the future."

There have, of course, been difficulties over the six years with the 2nd 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 not able to compete 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 therefore race for wiki.myamens.com the very first time this weekend and among the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all but one of the groups are, forum.altaycoins.com or forum.batman.gainedge.org soon will be, independently owned or run.

"These groups are now selling for $50 million, I would never have actually forecasted that this early," said Coutts, who prepares to bring another number of groups on board next year.

"We understood that that was the entire method the design was established, that group owners would be able 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 great surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)