By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP go back to where it all started in Sydney this weekend and six years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees an intense future for the ingenious global sailing league.

An Olympic champ and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts coordinated with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software company, to release the series with six teams all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which started in Sydney in February 2019 featured just 5 rounds, wiki.monnaie-libre.fr 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 simply remarkable, actually, the uptake and number of events now," SailGP president 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 desire to get to. So yeah, the future appearances great."

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 press the F50 foiling catamarans to their limits at what are breathtaking speeds for waterborne vessels.

"We didn't set out to simply attract the passionate sailing fan, we attempt to make this sport easy to understand and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts added.

"The majority of our fans are not avid sailors, and that is among the reasons we've grown so rapidly. We are appealing to people that much like enjoying a race, they don't have to comprehend anything about sailboats."

A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans turned out to enjoy Tom Slingsby's Australia group win the 2nd round of the series in Auckland last month.

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

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

Technological development is important to SailGP and hundreds of thousands of data points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for drapia.org the usage 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 overcome 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 in addition to the Australian group in a race, and be able to take a look around anywhere they desire. That's the future."

There have, obviously, been challenges over the six years with the second season interrupted 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 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 elements for Coutts is that all but among the groups are, or soon will be, privately owned or run.

"These teams are now offering for $50 million, I would never have predicted that this early," said Coutts, who prepares to bring another number of groups on board next year.

"We knew that that was the whole way the model was established, that group owners would have the ability to trade their teams and hopefully earn money out of it, however I didn't believe we 'd attain it this early. That's been a great surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)