The X Games catapulted action sports like skateboarding and snowboarding into the mainstream in the 1990s. Three decades later, it has reinvented itself as a team-based property with separate summer and winter leagues, and its franchises are selling for eight figures.
Although they never went away—outside of 2020 because of Covid-19—the X Games had fallen out of the limelight before private-equity firm MSP Capital purchased a majority stake in the business from ESPN in 2022 (ESPN remains a minority shareholder).
CEO Jeremy Bloom, who joined in late 2024, is a former Olympic skier who also had a brief stint in the NFL. He later founded marketing software company Integrate, which sold to PE firm Audax in 2022.
Bloom recently spoke with Front Office Sports to talk about the X Games, which is holding its first summer league championship this weekend in New Orleans, with the winning team taking home $500,000. Many of the events are available to watch linearly on ESPN or ESPNews, while the two biggest primetime competitions in skateboarding and BMX will be broadcast on ABC. The games are also available to stream on YouTube, Roku, and more. (The X Games are also the subject of a new four-part docuseries, Dropping In, produced by Front Office Sports Studios.)
Front Office Sports: You’ve led quite the life between Olympic skiing, the NFL, and leading a technology company in Integrate. What was the opportunity you saw with the X Games that made you decide to join?
Jeremy Bloom: The X Games is this incredible brand that is globally known, but they had sort of rested on their laurels for awhile. They were being treated like a legacy sports property where you just put it on TV and everyone’s going to show up the same way they used to.
MSP and I agreed it needed new energy, reinvention, because if you look at the TV ratings, it was stepping down and down and down, losing some relevance. Fast forward to today, if you look at the ratings from the Aspen X Games in 2026, that was the most watched X Games on TV in eight years.
FOS: How have this year’s summer events gone? How many people are showing up, what has the environment been like?
Bloom: At our June kickoff event in Sacramento, we broke the X Games attendance record with 52,000 people through the turnstile games. Our TV ratings were up 21% year over year, more than 12 million people watched across ESPN and ABC.
The thing the X Games has that everybody wants is the young demographic. Everybody is trying to get younger. We have always been relevant with the youth, and they showed up in droves. Not just in person and on linear either; a lot of folks in the younger age group are watching across digital. We’ve partnered with Roku, we’re available internationally on YouTube and Kick. All signs and signals are really positive.
FOS: The big change this year is the team format. You’ve sold five of six total teams, with buyers including Summit Ventures and UNA Group, and the deals are all eight figures. How involved are you with those sales processes?
Bloom: We’ve actually now sold all six teams, and there were many more groups that were interested. I’ve led the sales process from the first pitch to ultimately closing. I’m intimately involved, and we’ve partnered with investment bank Moelis. These are very sophisticated investors.
When I was hired, this was one of the pressure points. Folks were saying “you’re never going to sell these teams.” The thinking was that the athletes won’t adopt the team-based format, and that we weren’t going to find anybody who wants to invest in this space. The idea was that action sports is shrinking, not growing. But the momentum we’ve created is changing a lot of hearts and minds.
FOS: ESPN still owns a minority stake in the business. Do you own a stake?
Bloom: I do, a fairly significant stake. That was a big deal for me coming over here. I certainly wanted to be invested alongside MSP and ESPN.
FOS: When people think of the X Games, they think of people like Tony Hawk and Shaun White. Are they or any other OGs involved?
Bloom: We have an amazing group around the table of founder athletes, and they’re not just behind the league, they have some equity. It’s people like Tony Hawk, skateboarders Leticia Bufoni, Ryan Sheckler, and Nyjah Huston, snowboarders Scottie James, Chloe Kim, and Mark McMorris, and skier Eileen Gu. It’s a who’s who of people you would want to be part of this.
FOS: Tell me more about the equity these athletes own. Do they own stakes in the league? Specific teams?
Bloom: Their equity is specifically in the league they represent. The winter and summer leagues are two different entities, and then there’s the X Games entity, which is where I work. So there are three different classes of equity, if you will. These founder athletes have equity in their respective leagues, and I will say this: they get distributions every time we sell a team. So you have some very excited athletes getting really big checks from selling all these teams.
