Sailing-Bigger and Faster, SailGP Back where all of it Began In Sydney
By Nick Mulvenney
SYDNEY, thatswhathappened.wiki Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP returns to where everything began in Sydney this weekend and wiki.snooze-hotelsoftware.de 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees a brilliant future for the innovative international sailing league.
An Olympic champ and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts partnered with Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the Oracle software business, to launch the series with 6 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 just fantastic, actually, the uptake and variety 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 desire to get to. So yeah, the future appearances great."
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 limits at what are awesome speeds for waterborne vessels.
"We didn't set out to just attract the passionate 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 factors why we've grown so rapidly. We are appealing to 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 see Tom Slingsby's Australia group win the 2nd round of the series in Auckland last month.
"I think you'll see several 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 viewing on broadcast ... however the fan experience on website is likewise vitally essential. We desire fans to come and have a good time and see some excellent racing."
Technological development is essential to SailGP and hundreds of thousands of data points are passed on from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for classihub.in making use of race organisers, groups and to assist broadcasters improve the audience experience.
360 DEGREE VIEW
Coutts is thrilled about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is progressively used to overcome the mountain of information.
"The big advancement for us moving forward is the 360 degree view from on board the boat, with listening to the team comms," he said.
"The audience will be taken on board and trip along with the Australian group in a race, and have the ability to browse wherever they desire. 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 often at the grace of wind conditions.
A scarcity of F50s suggested the French team was not able to complete 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 very first time this weekend and among the most pleasing aspects for annunciogratis.net Coutts is that all but one of the groups are, or yogaasanas.science quickly will be, privately owned or run.
"These teams are now offering for $50 million, I would never ever have actually anticipated that this at an early stage," said Coutts, who plans to bring another number of teams on board next year.
"We understood that that was the entire way the model was established, that team owners would have the ability to trade their groups and hopefully make cash out of it, however I didn't believe we 'd attain it this early. That's been a great surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)