By Nick Mulvenney
SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP returns to where all of it began in Sydney this weekend and 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees a brilliant future for the innovative worldwide sailing league.
An Olympic champion and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts coordinated with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software business, to launch the series with six teams all owned by the league.
While the inaugural season which began 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 fantastic, really, the uptake and number of occasions now," SailGP chief executive 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 is not far from the mark when the world's finest sailors press the F50 foiling catamarans to their limits at what are breathtaking speeds for waterborne vessels.
"We didn't set out to just attract the passionate sailing fan, we try to make this sport understandable and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts included.
"The majority of our fans are not avid sailors, which is among the reasons that we have actually grown so rapidly. We are appealing to people that similar to seeing a race, they do not have to understand 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 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 crucial thing is the fans viewing on broadcast ... however the fan experience on site is also essential. We want fans to come and have a good time and see some great racing."
Technological development is integral 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 enhance the viewer experience.
360 DEGREE VIEW
Coutts is thrilled about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is significantly utilized to work through the mountain of information.
"The big advancement for us going forward is the 360 degree view from on board the boat, with listening to the group comms," he said.
"The audience will be taken on board and trip along with the Australian group in a race, and be able to look around wherever they desire. That's the future."
There have, naturally, been difficulties over the six years with the second season interfered with by the COVID pandemic and race days still in some cases at the grace of wind conditions.
A shortage of F50s meant the French team 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 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 wiki.vst.hs-furtwangen.de Coutts is that all however one of the teams are, or soon will be, independently owned or run.
"These groups are now offering for $50 million, I would never ever have predicted that this early on," 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 established, that group owners would be able to trade their teams and hopefully make cash out of it, but I didn't believe we 'd attain it this early. That's been a great surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)
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Sailing Bigger and Faster, SailGP Back where it all Began In Sydney
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