greenhedgehog

By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, memorial-genweb.org 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 innovative global sailing league.

An Olympic champion and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts partnered with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software application 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 five rounds, elearnportal.science 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 fantastic, really, the uptake and number of occasions now," SailGP chief executive 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 want to get to. So yeah, the future appearances excellent."

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

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

"The majority of our fans are not avid sailors, which's one of the reasons that we've grown so rapidly. We are appealing to individuals that simply like viewing a race, they don't need to comprehend anything about sailboats."

A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans turned out to enjoy Tom Slingsby's Australia team 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, perhaps even topping that," said Coutts, a 62-year-old New Zealander.

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

Technological development is important to SailGP and numerous countless information points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for the usage of race organisers, groups and to help broadcasters improve the .

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is delighted about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is increasingly employed to work through 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 trip together with the Australian group in a race, and have the ability to browse anywhere they want. That's the future."

There have, naturally, been obstacles over the six years with the second season disrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still often at the mercy of wind conditions.

A shortage of F50s meant the French group was unable to contend 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 first time this weekend and engel-und-waisen.de one of the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all however one of the groups are, addsub.wiki or quickly will be, privately owned or bphomesteading.com run.

"These groups are now costing $50 million, I would never have actually forecasted that this early on," said Coutts, who plans to bring another number of teams on board next year.

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