Sailing-Bigger and Faster, SailGP Back where all of it Began In Sydney
By Nick Mulvenney
SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP go back to where all of it began in Sydney this weekend and wiki.asexuality.org 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees a bright future for the innovative international sailing league.
An Olympic champ and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts teamed up with Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the Oracle software application company, to launch the series with 6 groups all owned by the league.
While the inaugural season which started in Sydney in February 2019 featured simply 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 incredible, 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 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 valetinowiki.racing the comparison is not far from the mark when the world's best sailors press the F50 hindering catamarans to their limitations at what are spectacular speeds for waterborne vessels.
"We didn't set out to simply appeal to the devoted sailing fan, we try to make this sport reasonable and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts added.
"The majority of our fans are not passionate sailors, which's one of the reasons we have actually grown so rapidly. We are attracting people that much like seeing a race, they don't have to understand anything about sailboats."
A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans turned out to view 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, a 62-year-old New Zealander.
"The most crucial thing is the fans viewing on broadcast ... but the fan experience on website is likewise essential. We want fans to come and have a good time and see some terrific racing."
Technological innovation is important to SailGP and numerous thousands of information points are passed on from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for making use of race organisers, teams and higgledy-piggledy.xyz to help broadcasters enhance the audience experience.
360 DEGREE VIEW
Coutts is thrilled about some more innovations coming online as Artificial Intelligence is progressively employed to overcome 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 team comms," he said.
"The audience will be taken on board and ride in addition to the Australian group in a race, and have the ability to browse anywhere they desire. That's the future."
There have, obviously, setiathome.berkeley.edu been challenges over the 6 years with the second season interfered with by the and wiki.rrtn.org race days still often at the mercy of wind conditions.
A shortage of F50s implied 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 full fleet of 12 boats will therefore race for the very first time this weekend and one of the most pleasing aspects for addsub.wiki Coutts is that all but among the groups are, or quickly will be, privately owned or wiki.eqoarevival.com run.
"These teams are now offering for $50 million, I would never ever have anticipated that this early," said Coutts, who prepares to bring another couple of teams on board next year.
"We understood that that was the entire way the model was established, that team owners would be able to trade their groups and hopefully earn money 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)