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

By Nick Mulvenney

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

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

While the inaugural season which began in Sydney in February 2019 featured just 5 rounds, this weekend's race will be the third round of 13 the now 12-strong fleet will contest on the 2025-26 schedule.

"It's just remarkable, really, 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 good."

The idea of Formula One on water is implicit in the league's name and the comparison is not far from the mark when the world's finest sailors press the F50 hindering catamarans to their limitations at what are awesome speeds for waterborne vessels.

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

"The majority of our fans are not avid sailors, which is among the reasons why we've grown so rapidly. We are attracting people that just like viewing a race, they do not have to understand anything about sailboats."

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

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

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

Technological innovation is essential to SailGP and hundreds of thousands of data points are passed on from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for using race organisers, teams and to assist broadcasters improve the audience experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is thrilled about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is progressively employed to work through the mountain of data.

"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 audience will be taken on board and trip in addition to the Australian group in a race, and have the ability to look around wherever they want. That's the future."

There have, obviously, been challenges over the 6 years with the 2nd season interrupted by the COVID pandemic and lovewiki.faith race days still in some cases at the grace of wind conditions.

A shortage of F50s suggested the French group 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 therefore race for the very first time this weekend and among the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all but among the groups are, or quickly will be, privately owned or run.

"These teams are now costing $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 entire method the model was established, that group owners would have the ability to trade their teams and ideally generate income out of it, but I didn't think we 'd attain it this early. That's been a good surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Michael Perry)