Sailing-Bigger and Faster, SailGP Back where everything 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 an intense future for the ingenious international sailing league.
An Olympic champion and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts teamed up with Larry Ellison, asteroidsathome.net the billionaire creator of the Oracle software application business, to release the series with 6 groups all owned by the league.
While the inaugural season which started in Sydney in February 2019 featured simply 5 rounds, this weekend's race will be the 3rd round of 13 the now 12-strong fleet will object to on the 2025-26 schedule.
"It's simply remarkable, in fact, 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 wish to get to. So yeah, the future looks good."
The concept of Formula One on water is implicit in the league's name and trade-britanica.trade the comparison is not far from the mark when the world's finest sailors press the F50 hindering catamarans to their limits at what are for waterborne vessels.
"We didn't set out to just interest the passionate sailing fan, we attempt to make this sport understandable and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts included.
"The majority of our fans are not devoted sailors, which is among the reasons we've grown so quickly. We are attracting people that much like enjoying a race, they don't need to understand anything about sailboats."
A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans ended up to view Tom Slingsby's Australia group win the second 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 watching on broadcast ... but the fan experience on site is also essential. We want fans to come and have a good time and see some excellent racing."
Technological innovation is important to SailGP and numerous thousands of data points are passed on from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for using race organisers, teams and setiathome.berkeley.edu to assist broadcasters enhance the audience experience.
360 DEGREE VIEW
Coutts is thrilled about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is progressively employed to overcome the mountain of data.
"The big development 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 ride in addition to the Australian team in a race, and have the ability to browse wherever they want. That's the future."
There have, obviously, been difficulties over the 6 years with the second season interfered with by the COVID pandemic and race days still often at the mercy of wind conditions.
A scarcity of F50s implied 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 complete fleet of 12 boats will for that reason race for the first time this weekend and gratisafhalen.be one of the most pleasing aspects for garagesale.es Coutts is that all but one of the groups are, or akropolistravel.com quickly will be, privately owned or run.
"These groups are now selling for $50 million, I would never have actually anticipated that this early on," said Coutts, who plans to bring another number of groups on board next year.
"We understood that that was the entire method the model was set up, that group 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 nice surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Michael Perry)