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By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP returns to where everything began in Sydney this weekend and 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees a bright future for the ingenious global sailing league.

An Olympic champion and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts teamed up with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software application company, to launch the series with six teams all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which started in Sydney in February 2019 featured simply 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 simply remarkable, in fact, the uptake and number 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 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 looks excellent."

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

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

"Most of our fans are not avid sailors, which's one of the reasons why we have actually grown so rapidly. We are appealing to people that similar to seeing a race, they do not have to comprehend anything about sailboats."

A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans ended up to enjoy Tom Slingsby's Australia group 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, maybe even topping that," said Coutts, a 62-year-old New Zealander.

"The most important thing is the fans viewing on broadcast ... however the fan experience on website is also essential. We desire fans to come and have a fun time and see some excellent racing."

Technological development is integral to SailGP and of data points are communicated from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for the use of race organisers, groups and to assist broadcasters enhance the audience experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is thrilled about some more innovations coming online as Artificial Intelligence is progressively utilized to resolve the mountain of information.

"The huge advancement for us going 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 desire. That's the future."

There have, obviously, been obstacles over the 6 years with the second season interfered with by the COVID pandemic and race days still often at the grace of wind conditions.

A lack of F50s indicated the French team 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 among the most pleasing aspects for Coutts is that all but among the groups are, or soon will be, privately owned or run.

"These groups are now offering for $50 million, I would never ever have actually forecasted that this at an early stage," said Coutts, who prepares 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 groups and ideally generate income out of it, however I didn't believe we 'd attain it this early. That's been a great surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)