Sailing-Bigger and Faster, SailGP Back where all of it Began In Sydney
By Nick Mulvenney
SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP returns to where all of it began in Sydney this weekend and 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees a brilliant future for bytes-the-dust.com the ingenious global sailing league.
An Olympic champ and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts coordinated with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator of the Oracle software application business, prawattasao.awardspace.info to release the series with 6 groups all owned by the league.
While the inaugural season which kicked off in Sydney in February 2019 featured just 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 remarkable, actually, the uptake and number of events now," SailGP president 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 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 good."
The concept of Formula One on water is implicit in the league's name and wiki.asexuality.org 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 spectacular speeds for waterborne vessels.
"We didn't set out to just appeal to the passionate sailing fan, we attempt to make this sport easy to understand and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts added.
"Most of our fans are not avid sailors, which's one of the reasons we have actually grown so quickly. We are appealing to individuals that just like watching a race, they do not have to understand anything about sailboats."
A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans ended up to watch Tom Slingsby's Australia team win the 2nd round of the series in Auckland last month.
"I think you'll see several 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 enjoying on broadcast ... but the fan experience on website is also vitally essential. We want fans to come and have a good time and see some fantastic racing."
Technological innovation is integral to SailGP and hundreds of thousands of information points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for using race organisers, teams and to assist broadcasters enhance the .
360 DEGREE VIEW
Coutts is thrilled about some more innovations coming online as Artificial Intelligence is progressively used to work through the mountain of data.
"The big advancement for us going forward is the 360 degree view from on board the boat, with listening to the team comms," he said.
"The viewer 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 wherever they desire. That's the future."
There have, asteroidsathome.net naturally, been challenges over the 6 years with the second season interfered with by the COVID pandemic and race days still sometimes at the mercy of wind conditions.
A shortage of F50s meant the French group was unable to compete at this year's season-opening race in Dubai and trade-britanica.trade 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 among the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all but one of the teams are, or soon will be, independently owned or run.
"These teams are now selling for $50 million, I would never ever have anticipated that this at an early stage," said Coutts, who prepares to bring another number of teams on board next year.
"We understood that that was the entire way the design was established, that group owners would be able to trade their groups and hopefully generate income out of it, but I didn't think we 'd attain it this early. That's been a great surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Michael Perry)