By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP returns to where all of it started in Sydney this weekend and 6 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 teamed up with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software company, to launch the series with six teams all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which kicked off in Sydney in February 2019 included just 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 simply incredible, 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 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 great."

The idea of Formula One on water is implicit in the league's name and hb9lc.org the contrast is not far from the mark when the world's finest sailors push the F50 hindering catamarans to their limitations at what are breathtaking speeds for waterborne vessels.

"We didn't set out to just attract the devoted sailing fan, we try to make this sport easy to understand and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts included.

"The majority of our fans are not passionate sailors, which is among the reasons we have actually grown so quickly. We are appealing to people that much like watching a race, they do not need to comprehend anything about sailboats."

A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans ended up to see Tom Slingsby's Australia team win the 2nd round of the series in Auckland last month.

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

"The most crucial thing is the fans enjoying on broadcast ... however the fan experience on website is likewise critically important. We desire fans to come and have a good time and see some fantastic racing."

Technological innovation is essential to SailGP and numerous thousands of information points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for setiathome.berkeley.edu using race organisers, teams and to assist broadcasters improve the viewer experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is excited about some more innovations coming online as Artificial Intelligence is increasingly utilized to resolve the mountain of information.

"The big development 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 together with the Australian team in a race, and have the ability to look around wherever they desire. That's the future."

There have, naturally, been challenges over the 6 years with the 2nd season disrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still often at the grace of wind conditions.

A lack of F50s implied the French group was unable to contend at this 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 however among the groups are, or soon will be, independently owned or run.

"These teams are now selling for $50 million, I would never ever have actually predicted 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 established, that team owners would be able to trade their groups and hopefully earn money out of it, but I didn't think we 'd attain it this early. That's been a great surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)