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By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP go back to where everything started in Sydney this weekend and 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees an intense future for the innovative global sailing league.

An Olympic champ and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts coordinated with Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the Oracle software application company, to launch the series with six groups all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which started in Sydney in February 2019 included just five 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 amazing, in fact, the uptake and number 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 somewhere 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 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 foiling catamarans to their limitations at what are breathtaking speeds for waterborne .

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

"The majority of our fans are not devoted sailors, and that is among the reasons that we've grown so rapidly. We are appealing to people that similar to enjoying a race, they do not need to understand 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, maybe even topping that," said Coutts, a 62-year-old New Zealander.

"The most important thing is the fans seeing on broadcast ... however the fan experience on website is also extremely essential. We want fans to come and have an excellent time and see some fantastic racing."

Technological development is essential to SailGP and numerous countless information points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for the use of race organisers, groups and trademarketclassifieds.com to help broadcasters enhance the viewer experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

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

"The huge 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 in addition to the Australian team in a race, and be able to browse any place they desire. That's the future."

There have, obviously, been obstacles 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 scarcity of F50s implied the French team 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 complete fleet of 12 boats will for that reason race for the first time this weekend and one of the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all but 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 forecasted that this early on," said Coutts, who plans to bring another number of groups on board next year.

"We understood that that was the whole way the model was established, that team owners would have the ability to trade their teams and ideally make cash out of it, however I didn't think we 'd attain it this early. That's been a nice surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)