Athletes ready for the Snow League, but is the action sports landscape?

You only get to make one first impression, and the Snow League evidently proved to its athletes that it truly is built to serve them in its inaugural competition. Now the question is how all the pieces of the new landscape of snowboarding and freeskiing will fit together going forward.

The Snow League, founded by Winter X Games and Olympic champion Shaun White, garnered instant trust from many athletes after the legendary snowboarder reached out to many of them personally to pick their brains about what they liked and didn’t like about other events going on. White also promised to make the league all about the athletes, elevating their visibility and proving to outsiders that they are legitimately elite — and compensate them for each event they compete in. The league’s marketing orbits around a core message of “the future of winter action sports.”

It also introduced a new competition format, trying to add more importance to each run and create new storylines.

And the athletes, for whom all this effort went into, were impressed by what the first event brought. Nearing the end of the 2024-25 season’s calendar, it begs the question of how it’ll work in a competitive landscape that already features the International Skiing Federation schedule — both World Cups and continental cups, which are important for things like placing on a national roster, etc. — and X Games promising a multiple-event calendar as well, starting as soon as next season, not to mention world championship events and the Olympics.

Aspen’s Alex Ferreira, the most decorated halfpipe skier in the world in the past few seasons, got to take in the inaugural Snow League in his backyard as a spectator: The Snow League held its first event as snowboard only, but will feature freeskiing at its next event in December in China.

Ferreira, who spoke with White about some ideas early on, was just as impressed as the competitors were with the first go-around. And he firmly thinks that the Snow League is prepared to claw its way to the forefront of the action sports landscape, as its marketing promises.

“Honestly, there’s not room for more (in the calendar), but I bet you a lot of athletes are going to make room for this event due to the prize money, due to the amount of care to the athletes, due to just the overall impression of it,” Ferreira said. “We all want to be superstars and be big. And this is going to be the pathway and channel to do it.”

The first Snow League competition was livestreamed in more than 95 countries, according to its communications team (though Japan, which produced four of the six podium finishers, including the two gold medalists, was not listed among them on the Snow League’s website). In the United States it was streamed on NBC’s Peacock, which has previously been the host of other events like NFL games and features more than 36 million subscribers. It will be re-broadcast on NBC on March 29.

Events like X Games have been broadcast live on platforms like ESPN and ABC, but the Snow League is trying to stake its claim in the TV/streaming audience landscape.

Saturday’s finals appeared to be well attended, with White stating that they had reached their attendance goal, but the Snow League did not immediately provide ticket sales or attendance information. There was some empty space in the general admission corral at the bottom of the halfpipe — which itself appeared to be a smaller space than it has been for X Games events — but was still crowded and fans lined both sides of the halfpipe. The Snow League Club, a three-story temporary luxury structure hosting VIPs, sold out.

“We’re pretty packed, I’m pretty thrilled,” White said in a post-finals media scrum. “Obviously, the first event so I don’t know the exact numbers, but we were sold out in the club. A lot of the GA attendance was great and I just was thrilled that people had an amazing time.

“Obviously events like X have been around for years and Opens and these things so I think we definitely made our mark and I think the attendance will ramp up more and more every year.”

The Snow League communications team did not make White available to the Aspen Daily News for further comments beyond the scrum, despite several requests before and during the event.

Athletes noted several details of the first event that stood out, from little things like fancier bibs (complete with athlete-specific numbers that they’ll wear for each event and will reportedly be retired with them) to shorter wait times at the top of the halfpipe thanks to the new format. But there were also notable details for the general admission fan experience, like a musical performance/podium stage directly adjacent to the pipe and widely viewable from the majority of the venue and traction mats running up the majority of the pipe.

The competition itself reserved some of its newly found drama for late: the new format was designed to lend itself to potential upsets in head-to-head competition and tiebreaking, do-or-die runs in the vein of a proverbial game seven in other sports.

Seven of the eight No. 1 seeds advanced out of day one, with half of them winning their heats on Friday. Four of them landed on the podium, including three on the men’s side. Seven of the eight quarterfinals were decided in two-run sweeps — Leadville’s Chase Blackwell was leading Alessandro Barbieri after the first run before crashing out on his second, drawing a tie. But the matchup didn’t yield the first third-run tiebreaker in Snow League history as Blackwell, blood dripping from his face from the crash but appearing to be OK, was pulled from the competition.

The third-run dramatics were reserved seemingly solely for Japan’s Sena Tomita, who worked harder than anyone else on Saturday to earn her women’s gold medal. Tomita came from behind against South Korea’s Gaon Choi in the semifinals after Choi won the first run. Tomita then put down back-to-back over-90-point runs to advance to the finals in the first true three-run head-to-head matchup.

Tomita then went the distance against Maddie Mastro, the only American to podium in the event. Tomita won the first run with a 91.25 run but yielded the second after crashing out. She narrowly beat out Mastro in the third run, with scores of 78.50 and 78.

“It was really hard because as soon as you made your run you had to go back up and get ready for your next run,” Tomita said through an interpreter. “So it was really challenging. … It’s an amazing feeling … it (holds) a lot of value to be the inaugural Snow League champion.”

Tomita took the win — and the season points leader patch — while Mastro took silver and Choi took bronze.

On the men’s side, it was a Japanese sweep. Yuto Totsuka topped Ruka Hirano in the finals in a two-run sweep, posting scores of 95.00 and 96.50, while Ayumu Hirano, the 2022 gold medalist and favorite to win the event, took bronze after topping Barbieri in the consolation match.

For many of the athletes it was likely one of the last competitions of the season — some will head to Switzerland for the world championships at the end of March. It’s the conclusion of a full World Cup calendar — plus other events like X Games — that has many athletes tired and bruised by the end.

And as true as the fact is that more competitions means more exposure, it’s simply not a reality of competing for some athletes. FIS, X Games and Snow League will either have to cooperate to allow scheduling for athletes or force them to choose — which they may have to do to begin with due to simple energy.

“Between X Games, Snow League, FIS, it’s only going to get busier from the sounds of it,” Mastro said. “So that’s definitely going to be an interesting item that I don’t know how we’ll get managed. 

“It’s going to require all three of those organizations to work together to put the athletes first and hopefully they’re considering that and realizing that they need to talk to each other and how they can make it all possible, make it so we can go to Snow League, go to X Games, compete in our World Cups and get Crystal Globes and do all of it. So hopefully they’re having those conversations of how they can think about the athletes and not overload us, because at some point we need to sleep and recover.”

With Snow League’s format refresh and athlete focus, some of the athletes at Buttermilk over the weekend think it may take an edge over its competitors. It’s other advantage is athlete compensation: the Snow League is set to dole out $370,000 in payments to athletes, ranging from $5,000 to all 36 competitors to an additional $50,000 given to Totsuka and Tomita for winning, with a total prize purse of $1.6 million for the first season’s four events.

But like all things, the question for the Snow League will be financial viability: it’s always ideal to compensate your athletes as best you can and provide top-of-the-scale experiences, but the money has to come from somewhere. 

The Snow League’s founding partners are hotel loyalty program Marriott Bonvoy; off-road vehicle Ineos Grenadier and beer brand Pacifico. It also has a multi-year broadcasting deal with NBC and secured $15 million in a funding round from a group of investors led by Left Lane Capital in January.

The money will just be part of the ongoing question: the Snow League will have to solve its calendar questions with other leagues, learn how to attract and keep snow action sports casuals and learn how to grow sustainably.

“It’s uncharted landscape,” White said in an article by The Washington Post. “I know where we want to go, but I don’t know how we’re going to get there.”

The Snow League will break for the summer, learn from its first event and prepare for its second event at Secret Garden in China in December. The competition will return to Aspen at the end of February 2026 and complete its first season in Switzerland after that. White told the athletes that in future years he hopes to expand the calendar to as many as 12 events.

What the future holds for the Snow League and winter action sports in general can’t yet be known. But it appears that some athletes are getting ready to bet on this horse — and its redheaded jockey.

“I’m excited to compete in this event,” Ferreira said. “I think Shaun White really taking the leap of faith, and him being an athlete, knowing what it takes to make the absolute best event, and now he’s living it in real life. And he’s actually, we’re all getting to see his vision come to life. And I think it’s really cool. I’m a huge fan, and I really want to see him succeed.”