X Games

The annual Summer and Winter X Games bring together "extreme" athletes who compete in such sporting events as skateboarding, in-line skating, snowboarding, sky-surfing, sport-climbing, stunt bicycling, street luge, and barefoot water-ski jumping. The cable TV sports network ESPN developed the X Games and first broadcast them in the summer of 1995; the Winter X Games debuted in 1998. Touted as an alternative Olympics, the X Games cater to youth culture (the name is a convenient play on Generation X) and popularize athletic risk-taking. The X Games also commercialize and organize characteristically marginal and disorderly activities like skateboarding and skydiving, calling into question whether these increasingly mainstreamed sports can still be considered "extreme."

"Extreme" sports are those largely individualistic athletic activities that require people to push themselves "to the extreme," often by defying both gravity and society's standards for reasonable risk. Typically, extreme athletes also project an image that counters that of the "normal" athlete in terms of appearance, attitude, and training regimen. The emerging popularity of extreme sports in the 1990s reflected a shift in American fitness trends. The fitness craze of the 1980s inspired many otherwise inactive, non-athletic individuals to take up activities like jogging and aerobics. Memberships at health clubs boomed. While health and fitness remained a big business into the 1990s, both advertisers and young adult consumers transformed fitness into a lifestyle rather than just a periodic visit to the health club. A cult of "adrenaline addiction" infiltrated the rhetoric of youth culture and influenced the marketing strategies aimed at these new consumers of the "extreme" image. Sales of mountain bikes, in-line skates, and snowboards increased dramatically, as did the popularity of bungee jumping and skydiving. ESPN's X Games capitalized on this emerging fitness and consumer trend.

The X Games codify activities that typically have no rules. By applying measurable performance criteria to such recreational pursuits as in-line skating, rock climbing, and snowboarding, ESPN is able to order and control potentially chaotic sports. Because of their inherent physical dangers, extreme sports have generally garnered society's disapproval, thus amplifying their popularity in youth culture. However, in the wake of the X Games, which have assimilated extreme sports into an organized brand of Olympic-like games, such activities have become more respectable and organized. As a result, "extreme" has an increasingly slippery connotation—extreme sports are a popular pleasure because of their marginality and perceived threat to the mainstream, but events like the X Games render extreme sports less marginal and subsequently alter their popular culture meanings.

Ultimately, the X Games represent far more than just a sports competition. Mass marketing and media strategies tie in music, fashion, and manifold product endorsements aimed at ESPN's mostly male, 12 to 34-year-old viewing audience. Sponsors include caffeinated colas, athletic shoes, fast-food restaurants, and an "official" pain-killing aspirin. Additionally, the competition annually promotes related alternative music soundtracks and videos. ESPN also launches a road show prior to the Games, and the touring sports extravaganza spotlights the various events. The featured sports even have their own unique language; ESPN offers a glossary of "X Speak" on its World Wide Web X Games homepage.

—Adam Golub

Further Reading:

Youngblut, Shelly, editor. Way Inside ESPN's X Games. New York, Hyperion, 1998.