By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP returns to where it all began in Sydney this weekend and yogaasanas.science 6 years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees an intense future for the ingenious worldwide sailing league.

An Olympic champion and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts coordinated with Larry Ellison, the billionaire creator 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 featured simply five 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 just fantastic, actually, 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 wish to get to. So yeah, the future looks 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 best sailors push the F50 foiling catamarans to their limitations at what are spectacular speeds for waterborne vessels.

"We didn't set out to simply attract the passionate sailing fan, we try to make this sport easy to understand and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts added.

"The majority of our fans are not devoted sailors, and that is among the reasons that we've grown so quickly. We are attracting individuals that similar to watching a race, they do not 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 think 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 essential thing is the fans seeing on broadcast ... but the fan experience on site is likewise essential. We want fans to come and have a good time and see some terrific 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 the usage of race organisers, teams and to assist broadcasters improve the viewer experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is thrilled about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is progressively employed to work through the mountain of information.

"The huge development for us moving forward is the 360 degree view from on board the boat, with listening to the group comms," he said.

"The viewer will be taken on board and ride together with the Australian group in a race, and be able to look around wherever they want. That's the future."

There have, naturally, been challenges over the 6 years with the second season disrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still in some cases at the mercy of wind conditions.

A shortage of F50s suggested the French group was unable 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 complete fleet of 12 boats will therefore race for the very first time this weekend and among the most pleasing elements for Coutts is that all however one of the groups are, or quickly will be, independently owned or run.

"These teams are now costing $50 million, I would never have actually anticipated that this early," 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 set up, that group owners would have the ability to trade their teams 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, modifying by Michael Perry)