The Issues with Action Sports & How to Fix Them

Valid points but to damn long to read... Skip to solutions for pertinant stuff

Great article but a bit too long

you weren't sponsored.

So, this is great for an academic paper, but I'd trim it up a bit for NS!

true but try trimming a 20 page paper, it's impossible without taking away from it

$42K/year as a lift operator is complete bullshit...

Great post! Been working on a site aimed at alleviating some of these issues, specifically athlete funding. Anyway to connect with you via email? Drop me a line a dominic@thefrynge.com

As a fellow academic, I can't get past the fact that you used "blow up" in a final paper (at wharton nonetheless). Regardless, to those of you complaining it's too long: He didn't write this for NS, trimming would significantly detract from the rhetoric and his argumentation. Give the dude some props for writing his cumulating paper on the sport we all love, not an easy task by any means.

Congrats on putting a final thesis together on a topic lacking significant research and documentation, would love to see how your professor responded to this haha

solid read man

Awesome! Nice to see some in-depth, well-researched academic stuff on NS.

culminating paper*

"This simplicity is one of the reasons why youth participation is on the rise. It is easy to get started (no additional gear needed), it is easily accessible and most importantly, and it is fun"

Agreed with most of this article, but this is something I had to disagree on and wished you could have touched on more. I feel the opposite, and that one of the biggest reasons skiing/other actions sports are not nearly as big as mainstream sports is accessibility. Skiing is one of the most expensive sports I can think of, and nearly impossible to get into without parent support. I think this alone is a huge barrier for action sports such as skiing.

Literally anyone of any social/economic class can pick up a ball and put their heart and soul into becoming a pro soccer/baseball ect player, whereas in skiing it seems to require living in expensive mountain towns, paying for gear, lift passes ect, and having professional coaches.

I second this. Although I agreed and enjoyed reading the paper, this part stuck out at me. It kinda sucks that this is the way it has to be. There really is no school sponsored freeski teams either. A lot of other sports played at high school and college are able to provide the means for students to participate, but this is not the case with skiing

Yeah I know I felt I was shooting myself in the foot with that line but I had to make the point for the sake of the article. There are a lot of kids switching from racing to freeskiing today. I did not mean to address that example to everyone, but rather to the few people already on that mountain. In retrospect I would have gone with skateboarding or surfing where all you need is a set up and you are good to go. I'll be fixing that in my next edit

Got an A. But I guess it's mostly because my teacher is a sports consultant for the major leagues and was in no position to call me on any of this haha

great write up! better have gotten a A

Great paper. Saving action sports is a topic that could use a lot more thought and study. I hope more people within our community, especially those with experience, would be willing to share their thoughts.

I've been working in action sports broadcasting for over 10 years, including being on staff for the X Games since 2012, and I want to add some insight:

--Summer X charges an entry fee. Since 2014, it was hosted at the Circuit of the Americas in Austin, TX. This year, Summer X is in Minneapolis at US Bank Stadium. Both facilities host other successful ticket-driven professional sporting events in urban areas. The move has not reversed the financial fortunes of the X Games or action sports. However, that's not to say ticket sales are not a good idea.

--Broadcast costs have not increased. The cost of broadcast equipment has dropped significantly over the lifetime of the X Games. In fact, in the past ESPN produced the X Games content itself. This year they hired an outside production company in a cost saving move. X Games production budget will decrease this year. I'm curious to see if the cost savings will be apparent in the broadcast.

--What has increased is the cost of broadcast rights for the NFL, NBA, MLB, MLS, etc. while the number of subscribers (the primary way ESPN generates revenue) has been hemorrhaging. You're in business school, so I'm sure that you can understand the economic effects of skyrocketing long-term fixed costs and decreasing demand. ESPN, once the most profitable center in the Disney media empire, has to cut costs to maintain profitability and keep Disney shareholders happy. Some are already screaming to spin-off ESPN. About 5-6 years ago, X Games--which ESPN does not pay rights-fees for--was seen as a hedge against millennial cord-cutting and increasing broadcast rights fees. That's why they were willing to get fleeced on Global X. At least that's the rationalization they told me when I went to Bristol to ask. It didn't work, X Games ratings have slid progressively for several years, even before Shaun White's absence. And now ESPN is fighting off a subscriber-loss driven death spiral. Costs must be cut and thus we've seen a number of sacred cows, like Skip Bayless, Bill Simmons and X Games, get the axe.

--The cable industry essentially functioned as a sports tax. ESPN collected the largest monthly fee of any cable channel and passed that money along to sports leagues in the form of broadcast rights fees. It inflated the cost of all broadcast rights regardless of the network and drove the astronomical increase in professional athlete's salaries over the past 25 years. In retrospect, we can now see that they were even subsidizing professional skiers. Don't worry, the day of reckoning for the NFL, NBA, MLB and to a lesser extent, the Olympics, is right around the corner. (Skiers should have insisted on long term contracts )

--Currently the most successful action sports are the ones that owned their own sports by owning their audiences and thus were insulated from ESPN's implosion. Rather than letting ESPN do the work, they built up their brands and bought time on TV and in return kept the revenue from sponsorship, advertising and ticket sales. Monster Energy Supercross. Street League Skateboarding. World Surf League. Formula Drift. Yeah, I know, they are my current or former clients, but they are also the only ones with any cash. Skiing and snowboarding had that option. I'm pretty sure USSA buys or trades for time for the Grand Prix. But USSA broadcasts are unwatchable when compared to X Games or even Supercross, WSL, SLS or FD's Drifstream. It didn't help that the community didn't embrace USSA either. I suppose the blame goes both ways.

--Skiing would be smart to adopt the business model created by successful action sports, particularly the WSL, and other leagues like PBR and UFC. It might look something like this:

--Build a federation of top tier independent competitions.
--Build a series consisting of those events.
--Hire a single management company to oversee each event. That management company should then be able to leverage economies of scale for media/event production, sponsorship sales, marketing etc. to lower the overall cost of holding an event while increasing the quality to the extent that these become events people would be willing to pay to attend.
--Invest in building star power through PR. Invest in storytelling like Supercross: Behind the Dream or even, ugh, The Ultimate Fighter.
--Bundle and monetize content. Potentially bypass cable networks (which no one under 30 subscribes to) and create an OTT SVOD channel in the US. Satellite distribution in EMEA where it is apparently going strong.

I don't think it would work in skiing because USSA, TEN and the SFR tour have too much vested interest in continuing to compete against each other. It's pretty amazing that the WSL was able to pull it off, but I guess that's where a big-time investor comes in.