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By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP returns to where all of it started in Sydney this and 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees a brilliant future for the ingenious global sailing league.

An Olympic champ 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 six groups 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, really, the uptake and number 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 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 the comparison is not far from the mark when the world's best sailors press the F50 hindering catamarans to their limits at what are spectacular speeds for waterborne vessels.

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

"The majority of our fans are not passionate sailors, and that is among the reasons we have actually grown so rapidly. We are interesting people that much like seeing a race, they don't need to understand anything about sailboats."

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

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

"The most essential thing is the fans enjoying on broadcast ... however the fan experience on site is likewise critically important. We desire fans to come and have an excellent time and see some excellent racing."

Technological development is essential to SailGP and numerous thousands of data points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for making use of race organisers, groups and to help broadcasters improve the audience experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is thrilled about some more innovations coming online as Artificial Intelligence is significantly used to overcome the mountain of data.

"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 audience will be taken on board and ride in addition to the Australian team in a race, and have the ability to take a look around any place they want. That's the future."

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

A shortage of F50s meant 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 full fleet of 12 boats will therefore race for garagesale.es the very 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 groups are now costing $50 million, I would never have forecasted that this early on," said Coutts, who plans to bring another couple of groups on board next year.

"We knew that that was the entire method the model was established, that group owners would be able to trade their groups and ideally earn money out of it, however I didn't think we 'd attain it this early. That's been a good surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)