How X Games CEO Jeremy Bloom Is Changing Actions Sports Forever

Bloom was an All-American football player for the University of Colorado and later drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in the 2006 NFL Draft. Before his transition to ‘traditional sports,’ Bloom was a die-hard skier, and a talented one at that.

He was the youngest male freeskier to qualify for the U.S. Ski Team, and be inducted into the United States Skiing Hall of Fame, is a three-time World Champion, two-time Olympian, and eleven-time World Cup Gold Medalist in freestyle skiing and moguls. He’s also the only athlete to ever compete at the Winter Olympics while being drafted into the NFL.

After a riveting and successful tenure in skiing and the NFL, Bloom left sports to co-found an enterprise software company. Thirteen years later, Bloom has returned to the sports world as the new CEO of the X Games and brings an incredibly unique perspective as both a former professional athlete and businessman.

Bloom’s Olympic jerseys hung in frames behind him as he logged onto our video call last week. It was quickly apparent that he was not only ready to answer my many questions, but sell me on his vision.

Since being sold in 2022, X Games has undergone a series of changes to bring life back into the almost 30-year-old brand. With Bloom now at the helm of these efforts, his intentions are clear— expand X Games events globally, work with a media partner that elevates the brand and is available and appealing to a wider audience, and perhaps above all, implement systems that financially support athletes.

The goals Bloom has for X Games are lofty to say the least, but having worked closely with a number of professional athletes across the action sports industry in my own career, and having heard the challenges of sustaining it as a career, I have to say, I’m both intrigued and inspired by Bloom’s initiatives.

At the core of Bloom’s plans is the recently announced X Games League. Unsurprisingly for someone with Bloom’s background, the League has taken notes from traditional sports in terms of how it intends to interact with fans and support athletes.

The League will host events that span across eight cities, four in the winter and four in the summer. So far, thirty-five cities have submitted bids and offers to underwrite most of the costs associated with events, a no-brainer with the potential economic boots of hosting an event like X Games.

Second, after a longtime partnership with ESPN, X Games has signed with Roku as a streaming partner. X Games Aspen will still be available on ABC and ESPN, but viewers will also be able to watch without a paywall on Roku in an effort to broaden viewership to Roku’s 90 million active subscribers.

Lastly, is the X Games League itself. In the broader picture, X Games wants to provide athletes the opportunity for a viable, sustainable career.

Building up the new X Games brand won’t just be about the games themselves. The company plans to use media initiatives to showcase the backgrounds and triumphs of the athletes, and further build their own personal brands.

“We’ve gotta tell the stories of our athletes. We have to build heroes, maybe build some villains along the way,” said Bloom.

The League itself will be made up of four winter teams and four summer teams, each with ten athletes (five male, five female), sold to private equity and high net worth individuals. A draft for the teams will be held at the end of the year.

Athletes will then compete and earn points for their teams based on their podiums and results. The real kicker? Athletes on X Games League teams will get put on salary, have their travel paid for, and get a health insurance stipend.

While the League will only be 40 athletes in the first year, non-drafted athletes will still be able to compete at X Games events in an effort to prove themselves and potentially be drafted for the next year. “In those League events, we're still gonna give out individual gold medals, right? So you can win an X Games gold medal as a non drafted athlete, all the team owners are gonna be looking around like, ‘how did we not draft this player?” said Bloom, laughing.

Bloom’s NFL roots show through in the plan, but he says it’s not a new model. The same model is used in things like TGL and F1 racing, and it not only helps the athletes, but engages the fans as well. The model also provides fans the opportunity for Fantasy Leagues, and X Games recently announced that betting on the League is now legal.

‘Comeback’ might be too strong of a word for what’s never truly left the action sport scene, but the different facets of Bloom’s vision, along with changes that look to the future like AI judging and different event formats, will certainly shake things up in the X Games landscape, and potentially the greater action sports world.

I’ll admit, I was skeptical when I saw the initial announcements about X Games League.

I still have many questions about the future of X Games as it pertains to media coverage, drafting, team ownership, and event sustainability, but in just thirty minutes with Bloom I was not only convinced, but impressed with his athlete-first approach.

Bloom’s vision and approach might feel a bit uncomfortable to core fans of the sport at first, but most change is uncomfortable. If professional skiing is to continue to be a viable career option, the sport needs folks like Bloom to lead the charge.