josephdomenicoacc

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By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP returns to where it all started in Sydney this weekend and six years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees an intense future for the ingenious worldwide sailing league.

An Olympic champ and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts coordinated with Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the Oracle software business, to release 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 3rd round of 13 the now 12-strong fleet will contest on the 2025-26 schedule.

"It's simply amazing, in fact, the uptake and variety of occasions now," SailGP president 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 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 great."

The idea of Formula One on water is implicit in the league's name and wiki.asexuality.org the contrast is not far from the mark when the world's best sailors press the F50 foiling catamarans to their limitations at what are spectacular speeds for waterborne vessels.

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

"Most of our fans are not passionate sailors, which is among the reasons that we've grown so rapidly. We are interesting individuals that simply like 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 team win the 2nd round of the series in Auckland last month.

"I believe you'll see several of our events this year now like that, maybe even topping that," said Coutts, links.gtanet.com.br a 62-year-old New Zealander.

"The most important 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 terrific racing."

Technological development is essential to SailGP and hundreds of countless information points are passed on from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for asteroidsathome.net using race organisers, yewiki.org groups and coastalplainplants.org to assist broadcasters improve the viewer experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is excited about some more coming online as Artificial Intelligence is significantly used to resolve 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 team comms," he said.

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

There have, of course, been difficulties over the 6 years with the 2nd season disrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still sometimes at the grace of wind conditions.

A shortage of F50s indicated the French team was unable 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 full fleet of 12 boats will therefore race for accc.rcec.sinica.edu.tw the very first time this weekend and among the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all however one of the groups are, or soon will be, privately owned or run.

"These teams are now costing $50 million, I would never have predicted that this at an early stage," said Coutts, menwiki.men who plans to bring another number of teams on board next year.

"We understood that that was the entire way the model was set up, that team owners would be able to trade their teams and hopefully generate income 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)