Sailing Bigger and Faster, SailGP Back where it all Began In Sydney - mthv

By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP go back to where everything began in Sydney this weekend and 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees a brilliant future for dokuwiki.stream the innovative international sailing league.

An Olympic champion and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts teamed up with Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the Oracle software business, to launch the series with 6 teams all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which began in Sydney in February 2019 featured simply 5 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 just incredible, really, 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 wish to get to. So yeah, the future looks excellent."

The concept of Formula One on water is implicit in the league's name and asteroidsathome.net the contrast is not far from the mark when the world's finest sailors push the F50 foiling catamarans to their limitations at what are spectacular speeds for waterborne vessels.

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

"The majority of our fans are not passionate sailors, which's one of the reasons that we've grown so rapidly. We are attracting people that just like enjoying a race, they do not have to understand anything about sailboats."

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

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

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

Technological development is essential to SailGP and hundreds of countless data points are communicated from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for using race organisers, teams and to help broadcasters improve the audience experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is excited about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is progressively employed to resolve the mountain of information.

"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 have the ability to browse any place they desire. That's the future."

There have, of course, asteroidsathome.net been obstacles over the six years with the 2nd season interrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still sometimes at the grace of wind conditions.

A scarcity of F50s meant 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 full fleet of 12 boats will therefore race for the very first time this weekend and one of the most pleasing aspects for Coutts is that all but one of the groups are, or wiki.lafabriquedelalogistique.fr soon will be, independently owned or run.

"These groups are now selling for $50 million, I would never ever have actually anticipated that this at an early stage," said Coutts, who prepares to bring another couple of groups on board next year.

"We understood that that was the entire way the design was set up, that group owners would be able to trade their groups and hopefully make cash out of it, however I didn't believe we 'd attain it this early. That's been a nice surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)