By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, utahsyardsale.com Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP returns 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 the innovative global sailing league.

An Olympic champ and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts teamed up with Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the Oracle software company, asteroidsathome.net to introduce the series with 6 groups all owned by the league.

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

"It's just fantastic, actually, 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 someplace around 20. If you compare that to Formula One that has 24, that's sort of where we desire to get to. So yeah, the future looks good."

The concept 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 finest sailors push the F50 hindering catamarans to their limitations at what are awesome speeds for waterborne vessels.

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

"The majority of our fans are not devoted sailors, and that is among the reasons we've grown so rapidly. We are appealing to people that just like viewing a race, they don't need to comprehend 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 think 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 important thing is the fans watching on broadcast ... but the fan experience on website is likewise critically important. We desire fans to come and have a fun time and see some terrific racing."

Technological innovation is essential to SailGP and hundreds of thousands of information points are communicated from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for using race organisers, groups and to assist broadcasters enhance the audience 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 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 trip along 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, bbarlock.com naturally, been challenges over the six years with the 2nd season disrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still in some cases at the mercy of wind conditions.

A lack of F50s suggested the French team 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 therefore race for surgiteams.com 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 costing $50 million, I would never ever have actually anticipated that this early on," said Coutts, who plans to bring another number of teams on board next year.

"We knew that that was the entire method the model was set up, that group owners would have the ability to trade their groups and hopefully generate income out of it, however I didn't think we 'd attain it this early. That's been a nice surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Michael Perry)