How X Games Flipped the Script

An 11-year-old girl stood poised on her skateboard on top of a ramp inside a cavernous venue known for hosting Super Bowls and Final Fours, one member of a mixed-gender team representing a single city at a season-ending championship event.

Then she dropped in, made history, won a gold medal, and helped further the evolution of her league and her sport.

Welcome to the new X Games.

If there was a moment that perfectly encapsulated the revamped version of the world’s premier action sports event, it came on a late July Saturday afternoon at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans. Mia Kretzer, the youngest competitor in X Games history when she debuted two years ago, landed an X Games first: a first fakie 720 body varial — two full rotations during which she picked her feet up off her board while spinning, then putting them back on the board and landing flawlessly, all while her ponytail whipped cartoonishly behind her. The move won Kretzer the gold medal in the skateboard vert best trick competition, and proved to be one of the biggest highlights of the first X Games League Championship, a three-day event that served as the culmination of nearly four years of evolution.

“We have an opportunity to transform X Games from a collection of incredible events into one of the world’s great sports leagues, while remaining true to the culture that made it iconic in the first place,” said Jeremy Bloom, who became CEO of the X Games in December 2024. “What excited me most wasn’t preserving what X Games has been, it was building what it can become.”

Evolving The X Games

From its birth in 1995, the X Games immediately became the standard by which action sports athletes in numerous disciplines challenged themselves. It helped make household names of stars such as Shaun White, Dave Mirra, Bob Burnquist, and others, and it became a reliable part of ESPN’s summer — and, later, winter — programming.

But ESPN, which owned the event, sold the X Games in October 2022 to MSP Capital for an undisclosed sum while retaining broadcast rights, in large part so the network could devote its resources toward other sports with rapidly escalating rights fees. In June 2024, the new owners announced that X Games would transition to a team-based concept, adopting a draft and a points system to go along with its individual events. Bloom, an Olympic moguls skier who also starred as a college football player at Colorado, was brought in as CEO from Integrate, the marketing software company he had co-founded and led as CEO.

The new league progressed quickly, even as X Games continued holding its summer and winter events under its traditional format. In March 2025, Annie Lokesh was hired from the WNBA, where she had been business transformation director, to serve as head of X Games League. In January 2026, X Games landed a three-year, eight-figure title sponsorship from crypto payments company Moonpay and announced the names of the four teams — XC (for X Games Club) Los Angeles, New York, São Paulo, and Tokyo — as well as the general managers for each organization. The first draft was held last March. In May, the league hired Tom Kiley from the NFL to be its senior vice president of global market development. Finally, the new competition format debuted with the three-stop summer season this year: first in Sacramento, California, from June 26—28, then two days in Japan from July 4—5, and finally the championship weekend in New Orleans from July 24—26.

Each of the four teams represents cities where action sports have a rich tradition. Though the teams aren’t physically based there, the goal of X Games’ executives is that it will give fans in those cities a team they can call their own and develop a connection in the same way they have with traditional stick-and-ball sports.

The draft and subsequent free agency resulted in each club fielding a roster of 10 competitors — five men and five women — to take part in skateboard and BMX. (MotoX was also an unofficial part of the event in New Orleans.) In the end, XC New York had edged XC Tokyo by 10 points for the title (Kretzer’s XC Los Angeles finished third), meaning that the Knicks aren’t the only team to bring a title back to the Big Apple this summer.

“X Games has an incredible global fan base, and we had a global fan base years before other leagues had a global fan base, just by the nature of our global athletes and global stops,” said Lokesh. “And so what having the league does is that it brings a regional fandom element to X Games for the 1st time. So fan skateboarders and BMX riders who live in New York now actually have something to follow versus watching the X Games, turning it off, and then going on to the next thing.”

‘Pretty Sick’

Through its first three decades, X Games had largely taken place in Los Angeles and southern California, but it was also held in Austin, Minneapolis, and Salt Lake City, as well as cities in Europe and Asia, making a move to a sports event powerhouse like New Orleans a natural step. “This is our championship, so we wanted a stage worthy of crowning our first champions,” said Bloom. “New Orleans is one of the world’s great event cities. It understands how to create experiences that people remember, and it has a rich culture that aligns well with the energy of X Games.”

New Orleans and the Superdome are known for hosting major sporting events, including eight Super Bowls (the most in NFL history), six men’s Final Fours (most recently in 2022), and five college football national championship games (four BCS and one CFP, with another coming in 2028). The complex hosts up to 450 events per year at the Superdome, the Smoothie King Center across the street (home of the NBA’s Pelicans), and Champions Square in front of the Superdome (site of the X Games Fan Fest), but this was the first time X Games or anything like it had been to the Crescent City.

“We have hosted a wide variety of events in our 38 years of existence, but this one certainly ranks up there as being unique,” said Jay Cicero, president and CEO of the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation. “X Games feels different. It’s a different crowd, it’s a different mindset, it’s very forward thinking, youthful, and pretty amazing to watch.”

The athletes, for their part, were just as amazed by their surroundings, both inside and outside the building. Tom Scharr, who won his first X Games gold medal at age 13 and took silver in the men’s park skateboarding at the 2024 Olympic Summer Games, said he was “three times as nervous probably” to be competing at a massive stadium like the Superdome. (Though that didn’t stop him from winning three golds in New Orleans.) “It’s all condensed. everyone’s right next to you,” he said. “It’s loud, and it’s definitely a lot more going on. But also at the same time, it gets really fired up. There’s more energy, honestly. You can feel it.”

In a career that has taken him around the world, this was Scharr’s first trip to New Orleans and he made the most of it: walking down Bourbon Street, of course, eating catfish for the first time (“kind of scared me a little bit, I’m not gonna lie”) and even taking a swamp tour (“that was pretty sick”).

The crowd, of course, thought was Scharr and his fellow competitors was doing was pretty sick, too. The floor of the Superdome accommodated the skateboarding, BMX and MotoX set-ups at the same time, and the crowd was able to move around easily to position themselves for maximum exposure to the world’s best performing jaw-dropping feats. X Games did not release official attendance figures, but the crowd appeared to be in line with the rough goal of 10,000 spectators per day, all of whom were grateful to be inside on days where temperatures touched 100 degrees.

“The best host cities view X Games as an investment—not simply an event,” said Bloom, and while no decisions have been made about bringing the X Games back to New Orleans, all sides seemed to agree it had been a success.

“Hosting is what we do,” said Evan Holmes, of ASM Global, the company that manages the Superdome. “But if the building is out of commerce for a big window, it’s got to be worth it because opportunity cost is a real thing. This is a public building and these are public dollars, so we need to make sure all the expectations are met.”

Though specific dollar amounts were not yet available, Holmes said, “I think we overperformed what we anticipated.”

Future Stars

All sports leagues crave adding young fans. Not many can sell them on watching superstar athletes who are the same age they are, like Kretzer, or connect so naturally with their fans’ other interests the way X Games can with fashion, music, and social media. It all means that the last stop on the reimagined X Games League is actually the first step toward building a league with limitless potential.

“One of the unique things about X Games and our athletes is many could argue they really were the first influencers, so that is inherently in the DNA of our sports,” said Lokesh, who added that club sponsorships will now be part of the league. “We’re seeing many leagues try to grapple with how to better leverage your athletes as influencers, but for our athletes, that comes as second nature to them. They’re posting, they’re promoting because that’s part of their brand.”

In addition to being what Cicero called “another feather in the cap” for the Sports Foundation as well as New Orleans and Company (the city’s CVB) and ASM Global, bringing the X Games to town enabled the city to identify and develop the action sports market in the region. It held community events at skateparks throughout the state and then invite the winners of those events to the X Games to be recognized.

“It gives you the opportunity to do something meaningful in each community that encourages kids to get out and do something, get active, said Cicero. “Discover a love for doing something you may not have known was there and then come see these world-class athletes, and maybe be inspired to be one yourself.”

That aligns perfectly with the vision Bloom sees for X Games. As an athlete, Bloom never had the chance to compete in X Games because his sport, moguls, was not represented. Now, he’s able to shape the entire future of the property for future generations.

“In two years, I want people to look at the X Games League and say, ‘This is real.’ More teams. More global host cities. Larger audiences. Stronger commercial partners. More opportunities for athletes,” he said. “Five years from now, we want X Games to be recognized as one of the most culturally influential global sports leagues.

“Most importantly, I want millions more kids around the world to discover skateboarding, BMX, motocross, skiing, and snowboarding because of what we’re building. If we inspire the next generation to be more active, dream bigger, and fall in love with action sports, then we’ll have accomplished something far more important than simply growing a business.”