Sailing-Bigger and Faster, SailGP Back where it all Began In Sydney
By Nick Mulvenney
SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP returns to where it all began in Sydney this weekend and 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees a brilliant future for the innovative worldwide sailing league.
An Olympic champ and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts partnered with Larry Ellison, library.kemu.ac.ke the billionaire creator of the Oracle software business, to release the series with 6 teams all owned by the league.
While the inaugural season which started in Sydney in February 2019 included simply five rounds, setiathome.berkeley.edu 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 number of events 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 looks excellent."
The concept 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 limitations at what are breathtaking speeds for waterborne vessels.
"We didn't set out to just attract the avid sailing fan, we attempt to make this sport understandable and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts included.
"Most of our fans are not passionate sailors, which's one of the reasons that we've grown so rapidly. We are attracting individuals that similar to enjoying a race, they do not need to comprehend anything about sailboats."
A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans ended up to enjoy Tom Slingsby's Australia team 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 important thing is the fans enjoying on broadcast ... but the fan experience on website is also essential. We desire fans to come and have a fun time and see some excellent racing."
Technological innovation is important to SailGP and numerous countless data points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for making use of race organisers, teams and photorum.eclat-mauve.fr to assist broadcasters enhance the viewer experience.
360 DEGREE VIEW
Coutts is thrilled about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is significantly utilized 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 along with the Australian team in a race, and have the ability to look around anywhere they desire. That's the future."
There have, of course, been difficulties over the 6 years with the 2nd season interfered with by the COVID pandemic and race days still sometimes at the mercy of wind conditions.
A lack of F50s suggested the French group was not able to contend at this 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 first time this weekend and one of the most pleasing aspects for Coutts is that all but one of the groups are, setiathome.berkeley.edu or soon will be, privately owned or run.
"These teams are now costing $50 million, I would never have forecasted that this early," said Coutts, sitiosecuador.com who prepares to bring another couple of groups on board next year.
"We understood that that was the entire method the model was established, that group owners would have the ability to trade their groups and ideally earn money out of it, but I didn't think we 'd attain it this early. That's been a good surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Michael Perry)