X Games Aspen Aims To Build the FOMO' With Roku Channel Besides a focus on streaming, the competition has reformatted many events By Mark J Burns, SVG Contributor Friday, January 24, 2025 - 1:36 pm
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X Games Aspen has returned, looking to build the next generation of youthful stars and reach younger audiences, The three-day competition on Buttermilk Mountain is the first with Roku as the action-sports property's exclusive U.S. streaming destination.
Yuto Totsuka in Men's Snowboard SuperPipe Final at 2025 X Games Aspen at Buttermilk (Photo: Trevor Brown Jr./X Games)
Our goal right now is to make X Games relevant again and bring it back on the pop-culture map, says Pete Dellaria, senior coordinating producer, X Games.
In addition to the Roku Sports Channel and X Games FAST channel, the men's and women's ski and snowboard events, including slopestyle and superpipe, is airing for 13 hours on ABC and ESPN.
It's imperative for us to broaden our audience, to give an idea of what it's like to be at the X Games and to build the FOMO, Dellaria says. We're trying to grow our audience. We're trying to find a way into the digital realm in a nice, easy way for us to learn and get some real good understandings about how to give our feed to our digital partners.
Maggie Voisin (left) and Jimmy Coleman are among the talent on hand to call the Winter X Games action. (Photo: Trevor Brown Jr./X Games)
He notes that viewership for the X Games, which is now majority-controlled by MSP Sports Capital, has skewed older, in the 50s and 60s demo, across ESPN and ABC. As a result, there's a concerted focus on retaining legacy fans in their 40s but also targeting consumers in the 18-34 range and even younger. The veteran broadcast executive said the X Games' future goal is to sign a multiyear media-rights deal with a streamer.
Where's the Next Superstar? Executives also say they're looking for the next Shaun White and Chloe Kim to connect them with the X Games audience through creative storytelling, behind-the-scenes access, personality-driven narratives, and onsite interviews, both before and after athletes' events. About a dozen first-time X Games athletes are competing in Aspen, per Dellaria.
The challenge is to build stars and heroes, says Hugh Arian, president, Echo Entertainment, the sole production vendor for the X Games. One of the things that I think has been difficult for X is that, as action sports has become more ingrained in our community and has more of a history, there are more kids doing it.
It's harder to find those generational athletes, he continues. Fifteen, 20 years ago, there weren't many participants, so it was easier to have a superstar. There are so many kids from so many walks of life in so many countries doing action sports now that it's hard to build superstars.
Ayumu Hirano in Men's Snowboard SuperPipe Final (Photo: Mark Kohlman/X Games)
Arian hopes that at least one X Games participant wins two or three events to help in the effort to develop the next big stars in the action-sports universe.
Says Dellaria, We're covering a sporting event with unlimited access to our athletes. How do we dial into that and make it matter? We'll be successful if the audience can feel what we feel here onsite. If that energy comes across, that's when we win.
There has also been a deliberate effort to condense X Games' broadcast hours and dive more into the actual competition, according to Dellaria. That includes reformatting this year's competition to build the drama both onsite and for broadcast. A majority of the events in Aspen will have a playoff and final group, with eight athletes trimmed to four in most cases.
X Games host Selema Masekela with the crowd in Aspen (Photo: Mpu Dinani/X Games)
This makes sense to try to build the drama and do it in a way where there are stakes, he says, noting that he wants the broadcast's 10 on-air talent, especially the sideline reporters, to convey the athlete's point-of-view throughout the weekend. Some of the talent will be positioned at the base of certain events, making it easier to interact with athletes and capture their in-the-moment perspectives. Among the broadcast talent will be announcer Jimmy Coleman, Selema Masekela leading the host set, and AJ McCord host-set roving reporter.
Now we can really build the stakes, says Dellaria. I tell my producers, Recognize the moment and build off that moment. Don't let it go.'
Broadcast Production Notes and More Unlike in years past, Echo Entertainment, as the only production vendor for Aspen, will oversee the entire broadcast, which will be in 1080p. Dome Productions is providing two mobile units - which will have about 72 EVS channels between them - for the weekend.
X Games will have three announcer booths: two outside and one inside the host-set area. According to Echo Entertainment Technical Manager Pierce Williams, 52 unique camera positions will be distributed over the five courses,. The camera complement features five POV cameras, with an emphasis on the slopestyle competitions, and eight super slo-mos. X Games is partnering again with California-based Beverly Hills Aerials, which will deploy four types of drones to capture closeups of athletes as well as scenic beauty shots of Buttermilk Mountain. More than 700,000 ft. of fiber will enable connections between cameras and microphones, according to Williams.
Buttermilk has hosted Winter X Games since 2002. (Photo: Mpu Dinani/X Games)
In addition, about 150 personnel will be onsite as part of the overall broadcast production, including brand and marketing individuals and events staffers. The X Games social and digital team will have nearly 20 onsite people capturing a
