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 an intense future for the ingenious 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 business, wiki.vst.hs-furtwangen.de to release the series with 6 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 3rd round of 13 the now 12-strong fleet will contest on the 2025-26 schedule.

"It's simply fantastic, 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 desire to get to. So yeah, the future appearances excellent."

The concept of Formula One on water is implicit in the league's name and garagesale.es the comparison is not far from the mark when the world's best sailors push 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 try to make this sport understandable and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts included.

"The majority of our fans are not devoted sailors, and that's one of the reasons that we've grown so quickly. We are appealing to individuals that much like seeing a race, they don't need 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 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 seeing on broadcast ... but the fan experience on website is also essential. We want fans to come and have a fun time and see some great racing."

Technological innovation is important to SailGP and hundreds of countless data points are passed on 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 delighted about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is increasingly used to resolve the mountain of information.

"The huge development 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 group in a race, and be able to browse wherever they desire. That's the future."

There have, obviously, been difficulties over the six years with the second season interfered with by the COVID pandemic and race days still sometimes at the mercy of wind conditions.

A scarcity of F50s indicated the French team was not able to contend at this race in Dubai and damage to the boat once they got it ruled them out of the Auckland leg.

The complete fleet of 12 boats will therefore race for the first time this weekend and fraternityofshadows.com among the most pleasing aspects for Coutts is that all but one of the teams are, or quickly will be, privately owned or run.

"These groups are now offering for $50 million, I would never have actually forecasted that this early on," said Coutts, who prepares to bring another couple of teams on board next year.

"We understood that that was the entire way the design was established, that group owners would be able to trade their teams and ideally make cash out of it, however I didn't believe we 'd attain it this early. That's been a good surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)