GitLab

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 a brilliant future for the innovative global sailing league.

An Olympic champ and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts coordinated with Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the Oracle software company, to launch the series with 6 groups all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which began in Sydney in February 2019 featured just five rounds, this weekend's race will be the 3rd round of 13 the now 12-strong fleet will object to on the 2025-26 schedule.

"It's simply fantastic, really, the uptake and variety 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 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 appearances good."

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

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

"The majority of our fans are not passionate sailors, and that is among the reasons we have actually grown so quickly. We are interesting individuals that much like enjoying a race, they do not need to understand anything about sailboats."

A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans turned out to watch Tom Slingsby's Australia team win the second round of the series in Auckland last month.

"I believe you'll see numerous of our events this year now like that, possibly even topping that," said Coutts, a 62-year-old New Zealander.

"The most important thing is the fans seeing on broadcast ... however the fan experience on site is also extremely crucial. We want fans to come and have a fantastic time and see some fantastic racing."

Technological development is integral to SailGP and hundreds of thousands of data points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for the use of race organisers, teams and to help broadcasters improve the audience experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is thrilled about some more innovations coming online as Artificial Intelligence is increasingly utilized 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 ride in addition to the Australian group in a race, and be able to take a look around wherever they desire. That's the future."

There have, bio.rogstecnologia.com.br obviously, been difficulties over the six years with the 2nd season disrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still often at the mercy of wind conditions.

A scarcity of F50s suggested the French group was not able to compete 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 valetinowiki.racing that reason race for the very first time this weekend and wavedream.wiki among the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all however among the groups are, utahsyardsale.com or soon will be, independently owned or suvenir51.ru run.

"These teams are now costing $50 million, I would never have anticipated that this early on," said Coutts, disgaeawiki.info who plans to bring another number of teams on board next year.

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