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 global sailing league.

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

While the inaugural season which kicked off 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 just incredible, in fact, the uptake and variety of occasions 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 someplace 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 looks good."

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

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

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

A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans ended up to watch Tom Slingsby's Australia team win the 2nd round of the series in Auckland last month.

"I think you'll see numerous of our events this year now like that, maybe 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 site is also extremely important. We want 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 making use of race organisers, teams and to assist broadcasters enhance the audience experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is delighted about some more innovations coming online as Artificial Intelligence is increasingly employed to work through the mountain of data.

"The huge advancement for us moving 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 trip in addition to the Australian team in a race, and be able to take a look around wherever they desire. That's the future."

There have, naturally, been obstacles over the six years with the 2nd season interrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still often at the mercy of wind conditions.

A shortage 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 full fleet of 12 boats will therefore race for the very first time this weekend and among the most pleasing aspects for Coutts is that all however among the teams are, or quickly will be, privately owned or run.

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

"We understood that that was the entire method the design was set up, that group owners would be able to trade their teams and ideally earn money 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)