X Games Unveils Four Franchises, MoonPay As Name Partner In Move To Leagues

The X Games wrapped its last stand-alone event this weekend in Aspen, Colo., with an announcement of the home cities for its first four franchises and a name sponsor as it shifts to a new structure featuring seasons, franchises and league play for both winter and summer.

As the new structure begins, the initial summer X Games league will feature teams tied to New York, Los Angeles, Sao Paulo, Brazil and Tokyo, Japan, said X Games CEO Jeremy Bloom (no relation). The long-term vision is to create 10 co-ed teams of 10 athletes each for a summer league and then different sets of athletes for winter sports, each franchise tied to a specific world city.

“We’re becoming a full league, with multiple stops,” Bloom said in an interview. “Think of it as F1; we’ll now have events all over the world.”

MoonPay, a crypto-based payments provider, will become the X Games League’s name partner, with an option to buy up to two franchises and a stake in the overall league, said Bloom. The three-year deal is valued at “mid-eight figure” levels, is category exclusive, and will rename the new operation the MoonPay X Games League, or XGL for short.

“This is the next chapter of action sports,” Bloom said in a release. “With MoonPay, X Games is evolving from individual contests into a global, co-ed league with teams, salaries, benefits, and real stakes across a full season of competition.”

Some 180 action-sports athletes have signaled interest in participating in the league, with a draft in Los Angeles coming March 12. The initial summer league will feature BMX and skateboarding competitions, with the first competitions set for June 26 in Sacramento, Calif.

The league structure radically transforms what X Games had always been. Originally, ESPN launched the games in 1995 to create new sports programming that it owned, and that would run during lulls in traditional sports calendars.

But the games also proved to be a huge boost to the visibility of new generations of athletes in action sports from snowboarding to BMX that had been quietly growing in popularity for years. Now, those sports are in the Olympics, their biggest stars emerging from countries around the world. The XGL approach will give the best of those athletes more sustained visibility with fans, more marketing opportunities, health care, salaries, and other benefits.

Bloom also bade a fond farewell to the old structure of the X Games, which closed out three frigid days on the slopes of Aspen with revenue up 120% year over year.

“Thirty years ago, the X Games started by Ron (Semiao) rolled out to athletes who were self-described misfits and outcasts,” Bloom said. “There was no big stage for those sports. They really built that rebellion and image. ‘F the establishment.’ It was all about that middle finger to everywhere. Thirty years later, it’s evolved a lot.”

The shift to league competitions is a big one for such individual-first aports. Long-time stars such as Tony Hawk and Chloe Kim are “fully bought in” to the shift, though Bloom acknowledged that some long-time fans “just don’t like change. They don’t really like the corporate involvement.”

The flip side, he said, “that spirit’s still alive and (the fans) still care. We think any conversation about these sports is a good thing.”

In the new leagues, each franchise owner can opt to buy and run teams for both the winter and summer sports circuits, though they can also buy only one circuit’s franchise if they choose, Bloom said.

General managers for each of the first four teams were also announced, including Bob Burnquist, Harumi Suzuki, Sharalee “Haze” Hazen, and Steve Rodriquez. Participation by the Brazilian-American Burnquist is particularly notable. He’s the most decorated athlete in X Games History with 30 career medals compiled over 22 years of competitions, a constant tinkerer with his sport’s technical aspects, and a member of the Skateboarding Hall of Fame.

Bloom’s F1 comparison for the new leagues isn’t accidental either. The X Games majority owner is MSP Sports Capital, which bought a controlling stake in 2022 from Disney-owned ESPN. The cable TV sports power still retains a minority stake and remains the games’ U.S. linear broadcast partner. MSP also bought a minority stake in F1’s Mclaren Racing Group in 2020, selling it back last year as part of a broader McLaren buyout of minority partners.

MoonPay says it has more than 30 million customers in 180 countries, and supports about 500 enterprise customers using its fintech and crypto applications.

“They’ve built a really incredible business that’s absolutely exploding globally,” Bloom said. “It’s validating for the league to bring in a new-generation financial-services company as partner.”

Competition judging going forward will be conducted in part using artificial intelligence tools to capture the increasingly intricate tricks that action-sports athletes are trying these days.

The use of AI technologies also attracted sponsorship interest by mega-cap tech companies Amazon and Alphabet’s Google, both major players in the sector, Bloom said. The X Games previously announced that Monster, the beverage company, will also be a sponsor.