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 everything began in Sydney this weekend and six years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees a bright future for the innovative worldwide sailing league.
An Olympic champ and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts teamed up with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software application company, to introduce the series with six groups all owned by the league.
While the inaugural season which kicked off in Sydney in February 2019 included simply 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 simply incredible, really, the uptake and variety of occasions now," SailGP president Coutts told 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 wish to get to. So yeah, the future looks good."
The idea 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 best sailors push the F50 hindering catamarans to their limits at what are awesome speeds for waterborne vessels.
"We didn't set out to just interest the devoted sailing fan, we attempt to make this sport reasonable and explainable for all sports fans," .
"The majority of our fans are not avid sailors, which is among the reasons that we have actually grown so rapidly. We are appealing to individuals that similar to seeing a race, they don't have to comprehend anything about sailboats."
A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans ended up to enjoy Tom Slingsby's Australia group 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, perhaps even topping that," said Coutts, a 62-year-old New Zealander.
"The most crucial thing is the fans enjoying on broadcast ... however the fan experience on site is also essential. We want fans to come and have a good time and see some excellent racing."
Technological development is essential to SailGP and numerous thousands of information points are communicated from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for photorum.eclat-mauve.fr making use of race organisers, teams and to assist broadcasters enhance the audience experience.
360 DEGREE VIEW
Coutts is thrilled about some more innovations coming online as Artificial Intelligence is increasingly used to work through the mountain of data.
"The huge 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 take a look around wherever they want. That's the future."
There have, bphomesteading.com naturally, been difficulties over the 6 years with the 2nd season interfered with by the COVID pandemic and race days still in some cases at the mercy of wind conditions.
A lack of F50s implied the French group 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 very first time this weekend and one of the most pleasing elements for photorum.eclat-mauve.fr Coutts is that all but among the groups are, or quickly will be, privately owned or run.
"These teams are now costing $50 million, I would never have anticipated that this early on," said Coutts, bio.rogstecnologia.com.br who prepares to bring another couple of groups on board next year.
"We understood that that was the entire way the design was established, that team owners would be able to trade their groups and ideally make cash 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)