Sailing-Bigger and Faster, SailGP Back where it all Began In Sydney
By Nick Mulvenney
SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP go back to where all of it started in Sydney this weekend and 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees an intense future for the innovative global sailing league.
An Olympic champ and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts teamed up with Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the Oracle software application company, to launch the series with six groups all owned by the league.
While the inaugural season which started in Sydney in February 2019 included just 5 rounds, this weekend's race will be the third round of 13 the now 12-strong fleet will object to on the 2025-26 schedule.
"It's simply incredible, really, the uptake and variety of events now," SailGP president Coutts told Reuters at the 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 want to get to. So yeah, the future looks good."
The idea of Formula One on water is implicit in the league's name and setiathome.berkeley.edu the comparison is not far from the mark when the world's finest sailors press the F50 foiling catamarans to their limitations at what are awesome speeds for waterborne vessels.
"We didn't set out to just attract the passionate sailing fan, we try to make this sport easy to understand and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts added.
"Most of our fans are not avid sailors, and that's one of the factors why we have actually grown so quickly. We are attracting people that much like enjoying a race, they do not have to comprehend anything about sailboats."
A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans turned out 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 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 ... however the fan experience on site is also critically important. We want fans to come and have a great time and see some great racing."
Technological innovation is integral to SailGP and numerous thousands of information points are passed on from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for making use of race organisers, links.gtanet.com.br teams and to assist broadcasters enhance the viewer experience.
360 DEGREE VIEW
Coutts is thrilled about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is significantly employed 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 trip along with the Australian group in a race, and be able to browse wherever they want. That's the future."
There have, naturally, opensourcebridge.science been difficulties over the six years with the second season interrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still in some cases at the grace of wind conditions.
A shortage of F50s indicated the French team was not able to contend at this year's season-opening race in Dubai and humanlove.stream 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 forum.kepri.bawaslu.go.id the first time this weekend and among the most pleasing aspects for kousokuwiki.org Coutts is that all but one of the groups are, or soon will be, independently owned or grandtribunal.org run.
"These teams are now costing $50 million, I would never ever have actually anticipated 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 design was set up, that team owners would have the ability to trade their teams and ideally make money out of it, but I didn't think we 'd attain it this early. That's been a great surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Michael Perry)