Sailing-Bigger and Faster, SailGP Back where all of it Began In Sydney
By Nick Mulvenney
SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP returns to where everything started in Sydney this weekend and rocksoff.org six years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees an intense future for historydb.date the innovative international sailing league.
An Olympic champion and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts partnered with Larry Ellison, townshipmarket.co.za the billionaire creator of the Oracle software company, to release the series with six teams all owned by the league.
While the inaugural season which began in Sydney in February 2019 included simply five 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 amazing, actually, the uptake and number of events now," SailGP chief executive 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 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 appearances great."
The idea of Formula One on water is implicit in the league's name and 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 attempt to make this sport reasonable and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts included.
"The majority of our fans are not passionate sailors, and that's one of the reasons why we've grown so quickly. We are attracting people that simply like watching a race, they don't need to comprehend anything about sailboats."
A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans ended up to view Tom Slingsby's Australia group 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, forum.pinoo.com.tr a 62-year-old New Zealander.
"The most essential thing is the fans seeing on broadcast ... however the fan experience on website is also critically important. We want fans to come and have a good time and see some excellent racing."
Technological innovation is essential to SailGP and hundreds of thousands of data points are communicated from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for the use of race organisers, allmy.bio teams and to assist broadcasters enhance the viewer experience.
360 DEGREE VIEW
Coutts is delighted about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is significantly used to resolve the mountain of information.
"The big development for us going forward is the 360 degree view from on board the boat, with listening to the team comms," he said.
"The viewer will be taken on board and ride together with the Australian group in a race, and be able to take a look around any place they desire. That's the future."
There have, users.atw.hu naturally, bbarlock.com been obstacles over the 6 years with the second season disrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still in some cases at the grace of wind conditions.
A lack of F50s meant the was not able to complete 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 complete fleet of 12 boats will therefore race for the first time this weekend and one of the most pleasing aspects for Coutts is that all however one of the groups are, or quickly will be, privately owned or run.
"These teams are now offering for $50 million, I would never have anticipated that this early," said Coutts, who plans to bring another number of groups on board next year.
"We knew that that was the entire way the model was established, that team owners would be able to trade their teams and ideally make cash out of it, however I didn't think we 'd attain it this early. That's been a good surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Michael Perry)