X Games Kicks Off a Bold New Era With Teams, Drafts, and Big Money

Action Sports Gets a Corporate Makeover

Sports like snowboarding, skateboarding, and BMX biking — founded on a spirit of devil-may-care individuality — are becoming team enterprises. The Summer X Games kicked off this week in Sacramento, California, marking the debut of a sweeping, multimillion-dollar overhaul that transforms one of sports' most recognizable brands from a collection of solo daredevils into a structured, franchise-based league. 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, launched its reboot with nothing less than the future of one of the sports industry's best-recognized brands at stake.

The winter version of the X Games, traditionally held in Aspen, Colorado, drew 50,000 fans this year and ratings on ESPN and ABC rose 48%. So the games weren't broken. But the private equity firm that now owns them had bigger ambitions. When MSP Sports Capital — which has stakes in F1 and Premier League soccer teams — bought the property in 2022, it had a bigger vision: to build a season-long race for a title.

How the New Format Works

The way to do that was by creating summer and winter teams that hold drafts. Each team features five men and five women competing together across disciplines. Both seasons will run over three events — the summer league will go to Tokyo and New Orleans after the debut in Sacramento, with the final event taking place late next month. It's a structure borrowed from traditional team sports, applied to athletes who have historically competed only for themselves.

Among the summer headliners are skateboarding's Nyjah Huston, Garrett Reynolds, and Chloe Covell, while Eileen Gu, Chloe Kim, Mark McMorris, and Scotty James are among those signed up for the winter portion. The star power is real — and so is the financial incentive for athletes to participate. One of the major lures for athletes was a guaranteed base salary, the likes of which is basically unheard of in action sports. Travel expenses will also be covered, and athletes will receive a health-care stipend in addition to a prize-money pool.

The Money Behind the Movement

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 had to scratch out paychecks in sports that have struggled to generate big prize pools. The new structure aims to change that math. One investor called the new version of the X Games "an entirely new category of sports ownership."

The teams themselves are attracting serious capital. Investment group UNA Sports Group bought the summer and winter teams based in New York in what the X Games said was an eight-figure transaction. Private equity investor Allen Thorpe bought the summer team in Los Angeles and the winter team based in Park City, Utah, while private equity group Summit Ventures and entrepreneur Ali El Ali bought the team based in São Paulo, Brazil. Investors see the action sports market much the way they once viewed women's basketball — undervalued, passionate, and primed for growth.

A High-Stakes Bet on Camaraderie

Jeremy Bloom, the Olympic freestyle skier and former NFL receiver hired by MSP Sports Capital shortly after they bought a majority stake in the X Games from ESPN in 2022, is the architect of this vision. He's candid about the challenge ahead. "I love working on big ideas, and this is a big idea," Bloom said. "But ideas are only worth the word on the page. The execution of ideas is always the hardest part."

The question is whether enough people will buy into the team concept to the point where they're willing to watch an entire season of action sports unfold. The X Games has always thrived on spectacle — gravity-defying tricks, fearless athletes, and moments that feel impossible. Now it's betting that fans will also embrace something new: rooting for a city, following a roster through a season, and caring who wins a championship. If it works, it could reshape how action sports are consumed and compensated for a generation. If it doesn't, the sport still has the halfpipes.