1 Sailing-Bigger and Faster, SailGP Back where all of it Began In Sydney

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By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP go back to where it all started in Sydney this weekend and 6 years on from the inaugural race, Coutts sees an intense future for the ingenious international sailing league.

An Olympic champ and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts teamed up with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software business, to release the series with six groups all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which started in Sydney in February 2019 included simply 5 rounds, 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 amazing, in fact, the uptake and variety of events now," SailGP chief executive 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 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 gdprhub.eu the contrast is not far from the mark when the world's finest sailors press the F50 hindering catamarans to their limitations at what are breathtaking speeds for waterborne vessels.

"We didn't set out to just interest the devoted sailing fan, we attempt to make this sport understandable and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts added.

"Most of our fans are not passionate sailors, which's one of the reasons we've grown so quickly. We are appealing to individuals that much like enjoying a race, they don't have to understand anything about sailboats."

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

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

Technological development is integral to SailGP and hundreds of countless data points are communicated from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for using race organisers, qoocle.com groups and oke.zone to assist broadcasters improve the audience experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is thrilled about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is progressively utilized to overcome the mountain of data.

"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 anywhere they want. That's the future."

There have, naturally, been difficulties over the 6 years with the second season disrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still sometimes at the mercy of wind conditions.

A scarcity of F50s meant the French group 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 complete fleet of 12 boats will therefore race for the first time this weekend and one of the most pleasing aspects for fishtanklive.wiki Coutts is that all but among the teams are, or bytes-the-dust.com soon will be, privately owned or classicalmusicmp3freedownload.com run.

"These groups are now costing $50 million, I would never ever have predicted that this at an early stage," said Coutts, who prepares to bring another couple of teams on board next year.

"We understood that that was the entire way the design was set up, that team owners would have the ability to trade their teams and hopefully generate income out of it, but I didn't believe we 'd attain it this early. That's been a good surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)