X Games League and Snow League: What we know about skiing’s two new event series

The concept of a “league” is currently all the rage in the winter sports scene. Arguably jump-started by the runaway success of the Jib League, a park jam series started by James “Woodsy” Woods, Øysten Bråten and Ferdinand Dahl in 2023, the idea of a skiing league has now been picked up by not one, but two big players: namely, Shaun White and the X Games itself.

Here’s what we know so far about their plans.

X Games League: Coming in 2026

Last month the X Games announced its plan to launch the X Games League (XGL) in 2026. Although the details are still sparse, this much is clear: X Games wants to expand its calendar internationally with a series of events that goes beyond the standard Winter and Summer X Games that action sports fans have grown accustomed to.

So what’s the concept behind the X Games League? For starters, there will be two separate leagues—one for summer and one for winter—with at least four stops each. Most notably, the XGL will include a team concept: groups of athletes competing together, potentially across different disciplines.

“In essence, we’ve used Formula One as a model for this new X Games League,” X Games Executive Chairman Jeff Moorad said. “To that end, we are creating a year-round calendar and introducing new commercial opportunities to accelerate the overall growth of X Games. These opportunities will provide a secure and sustainable future for our most important stakeholders—the athletes. By leveraging the incredibly valuable X Games brand, we will create a durable, global business that will be good for athletes, investors and sponsors.”

The team concept is the most interesting—and the most undefined—aspect of the plans for X Games League. What exactly does a XGL team look like? A couple of big air, slopestyle and halfpipe athletes, both skiers and snowboarders, lumped together under a brand-name title sponsor? Who will the sponsors be? It’s not hard to imagine a Red Bull team or a Monster Energy team, but beyond that, the playing field is open. Will ski brands with strong competitive rosters like Völkl, Atomic, Armada or K2 get on board? Will non-endemic corporate sponsors line up to front a team? Will Team Samsung or Team Cinnamon Toast Crunch win the first season of competition?

All this remains to be seen. But there’s no doubt that the phone lines in the X Games back office are currently hot with just these kinds of conversations.

The Snow League: Shaun White wants to change everything

Just a few days after the X Games announcement, snowboarder Shaun White announced his own event concept, the Snow League. In a slick announcement video, Shaun sits at a conference table and announces, “I just kinda wanna change everything.”

Changing everything apparently means starting a halfpipe event series that will feature both snowboarding and skiing. As with the X Games, the details still need to be filled in. But if all goes well, the first Snow League events should take place in March 2025, featuring 36 athletes and a $1.5 million USD prize purse in the first season.

In its launch video, the Snow League hints at a few different topics that are supposed to set this event series apart: “elevated professionalism,” a focus on high-quality commentary that “tells the athletes’ stories,” and the “best halfpipes in the world.”

In essence, TSL doesn’t sound all that different from the circuit of World Cup halfpipe events organized by FIS, the International Ski Federation. The key differences appear to be on the production side, with better commentary and more publicized livestreams, and in the sizeable prize purse that should drive the level of competition to new heights. In addition, our colleagues over at Powder Magazine report that the Snow League is considering a head-to-head competitive format that would ratchet up the excitement. All in all, it sounds a bit like Shaun White wants to take the formula being used for the Natural Selection Tour and bring it into the halfpipe.

“I’m just so excited to provide my fellow winter sports athletes with a premier global tour that’s going to showcase their talents, tell their stories, and in turn, accelerate their careers and global recognition,” says White. “We’ve reimagined competitive formats for edge-of-your-seat experiences that will be broadcast worldwide from iconic winter resort destinations. The next generation of superstar athletes are ready to rise.”

We’ve been here before

As details continue to emerge about the X Games League and Snow League, let’s make one thing clear: It’s always cool to see new events and new concepts entering the winter sports space. Since freeskiing became an Olympic sport back in 2014, most of the independent event series have disappeared, replaced by the FIS World Cup circuit as the only real professional contest series in the game. Introducing any kind of variety into this sterile environment is a good thing!

That said, it’s important to note that none of this is anything remarkably new or groundbreaking.

The X Games already has a history of attempting to expand its footprint. It wasn’t so long ago that Winter X Games were being held in Tignes, France and in Norway. In fact, the X Games attempted a similar international expansion all the way back in 2012.

“Three new summer X Games stops in Munich, Barcelona and Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil would be added to the existing X events in Los Angeles, Aspen and Tignes, creating a six-stop international X Games tour running from January to August,” we reported at the time. “Host cities had competed in a bidding process similar to that of the Olympics, with city governments and local coalitions competing to offer ESPN the best deal.”

What happened? This six-stop international X Games series lasted exactly one year before organizers pulled the plug due to budgetary constraints. Long story short, it wasn’t profitable.

“We are proud to have run world-class competitions for both the athletes and spectators,” ESPN announced at the time. “However, the overall economics of these events do not provide a sustainable future path.”

Fast forward a few years, and ESPN has sold a controlling interest in the X Games to a new stakeholder, MSP Sports Capital: “a global private equity firm that invests in teams, leagues, and other businesses in the sports ecosystem.”

The new league concept is apparently the brainchild of this new management. But will it fare any better than previous X Games expansion attempts? Time will tell.

How about the Snow League? Well, Shaun White also has a not-so-stellar history of organizing events. In 2014, White bought a controlling interest in Air & Style, whose snowboard events in Innsbruck, Austria and Munich, Germany had enjoyed popularity since the 1990s.

Under White’s leadership, Air & Style expanded its footprint with events in Beijing, China and Los Angeles, USA. However, by 2019 these once successful events also disappeared from the calendar without a trace, leaving behind a legacy of management missteps.

Will the Snow League be able to pick up where Air & Style left off, with hopefully some lessons learned? Again, only time will tell.