Sailing - SailGP - New Zealand Sail Grand Prix - Auckland, New Zealand - January 19, 2025 Switzerland's Sebastien Schneiter in action Ricardo Pinto/SailGP/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
SYDNEY (Reuters) - SailGP returns to where it all started in Sydney this weekend and six years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees a bright future for the innovative international sailing league.
An Olympic champion and skipper of three Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts teamed up with Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the Oracle software company, to launch the series with six teams all owned by the league.
While the inaugural season which kicked off in Sydney in February 2019 featured just 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 just amazing, actually, the uptake and number of events now," SailGP chief executive Coutts told Reuters at the Sydney Opera House on Friday.
"We're obviously sitting at 13, and looking 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 want to get to. So yeah, the future looks good."
The idea of Formula One on water is implicit in the league's name and the comparison is not far from the mark when the world's best sailors push the F50 foiling catamarans to their limits at what are breathtaking speeds for waterborne vessels.
"We didn't set out to just appeal to the avid sailing fan, we try to make this sport understandable and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts added.
"Most of our fans are not avid sailors, and that's one of the reasons why we've grown so quickly. We are appealing to people that just like watching a race, they don't have to understand anything about sailboats."
A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans turned out to watch Tom Slingsby's Australia team win the second round of the series in Auckland last month."I think you'll see several of our events this year now like that, maybe 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 vitally important. We want fans to come and have a great time and see some great racing."
Technological innovation is integral to SailGP and hundreds of thousands of data points are relayed from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for the use of race organisers, teams and to help broadcasters improve the viewer experience.
360 DEGREE VIEW
Coutts is excited about some more innovations coming online as Artificial Intelligence is increasingly employed to work through the mountain of data.
"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 viewer will be taken on board and ride along with the Australian team in a race, and be able to look around wherever they want. That's the future."
There have, of course, been challenges over the six years with the second season disrupted by the COVID pandemic and race days still sometimes at the mercy of wind conditions.
A shortage of F50s meant the French team 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 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 teams are, or soon will be, privately owned or run.
"These teams are now selling for $50 million, I would never have predicted that this early on," said Coutts, who plans to bring another couple of teams on board next year.
"We knew that that was the whole way the model was set up, that team owners would be able to trade their teams and hopefully make money out of it, but I didn't think we'd achieve it this early. That's been a nice surprise."
(Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, editing by Michael Perry)
