Sailing-Bigger and Faster, SailGP Back where all of it Began In Sydney
By Nick Mulvenney
SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP go back to where all of it 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 champion and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts coordinated with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software application business, to introduce the series with 6 teams all owned by the league.
While the inaugural season which kicked off in Sydney in February 2019 featured simply 5 rounds, this weekend's race will be the third round of 13 the now 12-strong fleet will contest on the 2025-26 schedule.
"It's just remarkable, actually, the uptake and variety of events now," SailGP president Coutts informed 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 wish to get to. So yeah, the future appearances excellent."
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 push the F50 hindering catamarans to their limits at what are awesome speeds for waterborne vessels.
"We didn't set out to simply appeal to the passionate sailing fan, we try to make this sport understandable and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts added.
"Most of our fans are not devoted sailors, and that's one of the reasons we have actually grown so rapidly. We are interesting individuals that just like watching a race, they do not need to comprehend anything about sailboats."
A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans turned out to see Tom Slingsby's Australia team win the 2nd round of the series in Auckland last month.
"I believe 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 important thing is the fans viewing on broadcast ... but the fan experience on website is also essential. We want fans to come and have a fun time and see some terrific 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, groups and to assist broadcasters improve the viewer experience.
360 DEGREE VIEW
Coutts is excited about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is increasingly used to overcome the mountain of information.
"The huge advancement 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 ride in addition to the Australian group in a race, and be able to look around anywhere they want. That's the future."
There have, obviously, been difficulties over the six years with the 2nd season disrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still in some cases at the grace of wind conditions.
A shortage of F50s meant the French group was unable 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 complete fleet of 12 boats will therefore race for the first time this weekend and pipewiki.org one of the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all however among the groups are, or quickly will be, independently owned or run.
"These teams are now costing $50 million, I would never ever have anticipated that this at an early stage," said Coutts, botdb.win who plans to bring another couple of groups on board next year.
"We understood that that was the entire way the model was established, that group owners would be able to trade their groups and hopefully earn money out of it, but I didn't believe we 'd attain it this early. That's been a great surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Michael Perry)