Everybody gets a league

For many years, the professionalization of many outdoor sports has been stymied by a lack of cohesive event relationships, infrequent or difficult to access coverage, and easy-to-follow seasons or championships. We’re starting to see more consolidation and experimentation happening, and with that a desire to better capitalize on the growing popularity of outdoor sports.

Gold medal-winning snowboarder Shaun White recently announced the creation of the Snow League, a season long snow sports competition focusing on 36 snowboarding and freeskiing athletes that plans to feature a $1.5M prize purse. The league will feature 5 halfpipe events in the first season (2025) with plans for additional events and disciplines in subsequent seasons.

It’s not a new idea, plenty of other “niche” outdoor sports have leagues, seasons, and championships every year. I often watch the Golden Trail World Series, which has been active since 2018 and consists of 7 “World Series” events for trail running and a range of other “National Series” races. In comparison to UTMB, which has several high profile races and the unequivocal championship of ultra-running, the GTWS allows for storylines and stakes to develop over the entire racing season rather than a few independent-feeling races and a single championship.

GTWS

Similar models already exist, with varying degrees of coverage and support from international governing bodies. The Freeride World Tour, Natural Selection, and the FIS Snowboard/Ski World Cup. The X-Games. The UCI MTB World Series. The Diamond League. The American Cornhole League (cornhole is apparently now America’s most played sport, who knew?). I think success for the Snow League will largely hinge on what kind of distribution deal that White can negotiate. The potential viewership and White’s recognizable star power are two key aspects to attracting the kind of investment from sponsors that will support the higher prize purses that White is shooting for.

The Diamond League, a relatively successful league for track and field athletes over the last decade, is under fire after NBC didn’t renew their USA broadcast rights and the subsequent announcement that those rights had been granted to FloTrack, a track-focused website that charges $29.99/month for access to streaming events. The events were previously available on Peacock ($5.99/month), which many watchers already had as part of their normal streaming packages. The concern of athletes primarily centers around how the deal would limit the audience, exposure, and potential growth of the sport in coming years. “Every time it seems like track and field builds momentum, something like this happens and just negates all of it,” says 2022 world championship medallist and 400m hurdler Trevor Bassitt told Running Magazine. This development joins other criticisms – a primary one being that the top athletes don’t race against each other enough. When the most popular athletes in the sport only meet once or twice a year (usually at a world championship), it’s hard for storylines and true rivalries to develop.

In contrast, Michael Johnson, the American 400m record holder, is launching the Grand Slam Track League next year, after securing over $30M in investment. The league plans to sign 48 athletes to contracts, and then bring another 48 athletes to each of the four meets. Johnson told ESPN that “television is a priority for his new league, which has been in contact with all the major broadcasters, with a heavy emphasis for us on the U.S." It’s a strategy more in line with the Major Championships in golf, where a small number of spotlight events bring together maximum television coverage and a concentration of the most high profile athletes in the sport. So far he’s signed Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (who just broke her own 400m hurdles world record again), and the outspoken Josh Kerr, whose rivalry with Olympic 1500m champion Jakob Ingerbrigtsen is one of the most exciting in the sport right now.

The Snow League will have additional challenges, like competing with the new X-Games League, a revamped format for individual and teams that will “provide a year-round international competition calendar for X Games that will enable athletes to earn compensation beyond the $2.4 million already awarded through existing prize purses…team investors and XGL athletes will have a platform from which to build and generate additional revenue streams via sponsorships and team-specific merchandise.”

Do these high profile events and marketing focused on rivalries and team stories remind you of anything? Formula 1 has seen a remarkable growth in popularity due in large part to the success of the Netflix series Drive to Survive. The documentary-style content dives into the races as well as the off-track lives of drivers – creating a space for casual (or brand new) fans to form opinions, get invested in drama, and develop stronger connections drivers and  seasonal storylines. I don’t think it's a coincidence that many of these new league approaches are taking cues from this approach. The teams in X-Games, a series of ‘major’ events to concentrate athlete interactions and viewership in the Snow League and Grand Slam, and I would not be surprised if a few Drive to Survive-style shows are being pitched behind the scenes. For these new competitions to find success, it's likely that they'll need these kind of hooks to capture and retain an audience that goes beyond dedicated snowboarding/skiing fans.

It’s hard to root against anybody who’s trying to bring more exposure to the athletes and get them paid. It's a worthy goal, and it's great to see experimentation with new ideas and formats that might bring more fans (and future participants) to these sports. But…I think there are still big hills to climb. As shown above, it seems even F1 is hitting a plateau, and viewership and attendance for action-sport contests has been fickle at best over the last decade. Eventually, it all comes down to money. Can the Snow League or X-Games League create enough of a spectacle through star power, rivalries, and more in order to attract and hold the audience necessary to keep sponsorship and prize money flowing? Will a proliferation of focused outdoor sport leagues lead to viewership fatigue? Which do you think will still be around for 2026? Time will tell.

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