The X Games are in an odd situation, as they’re one of the highest-profile competitions for many of their included sports, but are owned and run by a sports media company in ESPN rather than the international sports federations that run the world championships and Olympics. That has the potential for some conflicts of interest, and one appears to have shown up this year; Sports Business Journal‘s Ben Fischer reported this week that multiple sources said ESPN refused to invite star snowboarder Shaun White to this year’s X Games because he “disparaged the series while promoting his own Air + Style festival.” That ends the mystery of why White wasn’t competing, as ESPN only provided some vague comments about White not being invited to The Denver Post in January, but it raises a new question; is ESPN justified in picking who goes not based on merit, but based on their comments?
If the X Games were the Olympics or the world championships, the answer would be “absolutely not.” It calls the credibility of an event into question when the best athletes aren’t competing in it (see all the drama over White’s late withdrawal from the slopestyle event in the Sochi Olympics), and competitions like the Olympics and the worlds are solely about merit and determining who’s the best. Things get a little murkier when it comes to the X Games, though; yes, it’s a high-level athletic event, but it’s one whose primary purpose is creating programming for ESPN, and with them paying the costs for it, there’s at least an argument that they should be able to invite the athletes they want.
ESPN is walking a dangerous line here, though, and they risk devaluing the X Games with actions like this. White was a big part of making the Winter X Games the success they currently are, competing there for 15 years (every year since his debut in 2000 at 13, except for 2014 when he skipped the event to prepare for the Olympics) and winning 23 medals and a record 15 gold medals. It’s not like he doesn’t currently deserve a spot, either; he won the Dew Tour halfpipe contest in December and is still competing with the world’s best. Moreover, remember that ESPN is also a journalistic entity that has to cover White at times. That’s going to be more awkward now the business side has banned him from competing at the X Games.
What exactly did White say that bugged ESPN so much? Well, it seems the problem might have come from these comments he made about the X Games and his own Air+Style tour at Forbes‘ 30 Under 30 summit in October:
In the video clip, White says, “X Games was planning on expanding their reach and going global with all these events around the world, and I did all these meetings with them and got all the way down the road to do this big deal and it never really panned out, so I was like, ‘Wow, this is perfect. They don’t want to do this with me so I’m immediately going to go and set out and do what I want to do, because the idea’s still there and the passion’s still there. You run into this dead end and there’s only one way to turn, which is to go back the way you came and do it yourself.” That’s some mild criticism of the X Games, but nothing too major. However, at the same conference, he apparently had some harsher words for the X Games:
“X Games went global, it was a huge failure,” he explained, “they used the same marketing everywhere [and] ended up diluting the brand.”
Okay, that’s a little more significant, and it’s notable that White’s Air+Style events are direct competitors to the X Games on the snowboarding front, especially now that he’s doing them stateside as well as around the world (the first L.A. one was last year, and the second one is later this month). From the business side, ESPN probably doesn’t want to give White any more exposure. That seems shortsighted, though.
Yes, White has become somewhat of a rival, and sure, he said some things ESPN didn’t like, but he’s still one of the best snowboarders out there and one of the sport’s biggest draws. Keeping him out over this kind of a slight probably hurts the X Games from a ratings and ticket-sales standpoint, and it certainly hurts from a standpoint of the perceived level of competition and of ESPN’s fairness in running the competition. ESPN is a business, and they’re running the X Games like a business, but they should keep in mind that this approach has the potential to hurt them on the business side, and that acting more like a sports federation might make the X Games a bigger business success in the long run.
