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

By Nick Mulvenney

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

An Olympic champ and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts teamed up with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software application business, gdprhub.eu to release the series with 6 groups all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which began in Sydney in February 2019 included simply five 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 incredible, in fact, the uptake and number of occasions now," SailGP president 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 idea 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 foiling catamarans to their limitations at what are spectacular speeds for waterborne vessels.

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

"The majority of our fans are not devoted sailors, which's one of the factors why we've grown so rapidly. We are attracting individuals that similar to viewing a race, they do not have to comprehend anything about sailboats."

A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans turned out 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, a 62-year-old New Zealander.

"The most crucial thing is the fans watching on broadcast ... but the fan experience on website is likewise critically important. We desire fans to come and have a good time and see some fantastic racing."

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

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is excited about some more innovations coming online as Artificial Intelligence is increasingly employed to resolve the mountain of data.

"The big development for us going 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 look around anywhere they desire. That's the future."

There have, of course, been challenges over the 6 years with the 2nd season disrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still in some cases at the mercy of wind conditions.

A scarcity of F50s meant the French group was unable 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 Coutts is that all however one of the teams are, or soon will be, privately owned or run.

"These groups are now selling for $50 million, I would never have actually forecasted 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 groups and hopefully generate income out of it, but I didn't believe we 'd attain it this early. That's been a good surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Michael Perry)