By Nick Mulvenney

SYDNEY, Feb 7 (Reuters) - SailGP go back to where all of it began in Sydney this weekend and six years on from the inaugural race, co-founder Russell Coutts sees an intense future for the innovative international sailing league.

An Olympic champ and skipper of 3 Americas Cup-winning boats, Coutts partnered with Larry Ellison, the billionaire founder of the Oracle software company, to launch the series with 6 groups all owned by the league.

While the inaugural season which kicked off in Sydney in February 2019 included 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 fantastic, in fact, the uptake and variety of events now," SailGP president 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 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 finest sailors press the F50 foiling catamarans to their limits at what are breathtaking speeds for waterborne vessels.

"We didn't set out to just interest the devoted sailing fan, we try to make this sport understandable and explainable for all sports fans," Coutts included.

"Most of our fans are not devoted sailors, and that's one of the reasons we have actually grown so rapidly. We are appealing to individuals that much like seeing a race, they do not need to understand anything about sailboats."

A bumper crowd of 25,000 ticketed fans turned out to enjoy Tom Slingsby's Australia group win the 2nd round of the series in Auckland last month.

"I believe 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 important thing is the fans viewing on broadcast ... however the fan experience on site is also critically important. We desire fans to come and have a terrific time and see some fantastic racing."

Technological development is essential to SailGP and numerous countless information points are passed on from the boats to the Oracle Cloud for the use of race organisers, teams and to assist broadcasters improve the viewer experience.

360 DEGREE VIEW

Coutts is excited about some more developments coming online as Artificial Intelligence is progressively used to work through 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 group 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 look around anywhere they want. That's the future."

There have, naturally, been challenges over the 6 years with the 2nd season interfered with by the COVID pandemic and race days still sometimes at the grace of wind conditions.

A lack of F50s indicated the French team was not able 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 hb9lc.org among the most pleasing aspects for Coutts is that all however among the groups are, or soon will be, privately owned or run.

"These teams are now costing $50 million, I would never ever have anticipated that this early on," said Coutts, who plans to bring another couple of teams on board next year.

"We understood that that was the entire method the model was established, that team owners would have the ability to trade their groups and ideally generate income out of it, but I didn't believe we 'd attain it this early. That's been a good surprise." (Reporting by Nick Mulvenney, modifying by Michael Perry)