The X Games is out to show there are riskier moves in action sports than flying upside down above a halfpipe. The name that put action sports on the map, then turned it into big business that eventually landed in the Olympics with its risk-taking, counterculture vibe, will debut its multimillion-dollar reboot with nothing less than the future of one of the sports industry’s best-recognized brands at stake.

New Team Concept

Sports like snowboarding, skateboarding and BMX biking that were founded on a spirit of devil-may-care individuality are becoming team enterprises. Those same sports that were founded on the idea that it was more about hanging out and doing cool stuff than medals, money and winning are now building franchises that organizers say are selling as part of eight-figure transactions.

The debut of the new team concept, scheduled to cover both the upcoming summer and winter seasons, is set for Friday in Sacramento, California. Among the headliners are skateboarding’s Nyjah Huston, Garrett Reynolds and Chloe Covell. Eileen Gu, Chloe Kim, Mark McMorris and Scotty James are among those signed up for the winter portion.

Future of Action Sports

Jeremy Bloom, the Olympic freestyle skier and former NFL receiver who was hired by MSP Sports Capital shortly after they bought a majority stake in the X Games from ESPN in 2022, said, “I love working on big ideas, and this is a big idea.”

The X Games always hoped its franchises would generate value and was trying to sell minority stakes in the teams, saying they were worth $300 million. The team concept hasn’t caught on and the pullout of the Saudi investment fund backing the league is putting the worth of those teams at risk.

Will fans follow sports beyond X Games, Olympics? While golf still resides in the category of a niche sport, its schedule has a familiar cadence and the tug between the PGA Tour and LIV Golf largely was a difference in vision among some players who were rich and others who were richer.

Action sports has less of that. For every athlete like Huston or Gu — whose sponsorship income dwarfs what they’ve collected in prize money over the years — there are dozens more who have to scratch out paychecks in sports that have struggled to generate big prize pools.

Original reporting: KSAT Sports (San Antonio) — read the source article.