AI Judging, Gambling, and Healthcare— X Games is Changing

The move enables Bloom to blend his worlds together. An All-American football player at the University of Colorado, he was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles in the 2006 NFL draft. He later made the U.S. Olympic Ski team twice, and won 10 FIS World Cup gold medals in Freestyle Moguls. He’s a member of the National Ski Hall of Fame, and has followed that up with a 13-year career in the technology industry.

Bloom also expanded on the details of the X Games League in our conversation.

The new team format will launch in 2026, and will feature teams in eight cities. The points system is simple: podium finishes earn points. The team at the end of the season with the most points will be crowned the champion, as simple as that.

It’s not a new model, but rather, formed directly out of the concept already established by sports leagues such as NASCAR, LIV Golf, and Formula One racing.

Right now, the league is in the process of selling teams to private equity groups and “high net worth individuals,” Bloom said.

“We will have real ownership groups of these teams, and we'll have an action sports draft at the end of this year. And so if you own a winter team, you'll be able to draft ten players, five women and five men,” Bloom said. “And what's the goal? Pretty simple. Draft the athletes that have the highest on podium percentage. That's how you score points. We want to make it dead simple, like, if you're on a podium, you're scored a point for your team.”

These are big moves, and many of them go against the counter-culture ethos that the X Games was originally founded on. There’s a good chance that much of the core audience will be resistant to the changes. Bloom and his team know that.

“You’re going to have a lot of people with deeply entrenched thoughts and beliefs and ideas of what you should and shouldn't do,” he said. “The only thing that we know for sure that won't work is status quo. If we don't do anything, the path that we're going is not working. It will not work.”

Fantasy sports, real-time analytics, sports betting, and expanded fan engagement can all be expected from the X Games League (XGL). In addition, all athletes will be provided a salary, lodging, and travel will be covered, and perhaps most importantly, all the athletes will be offered health insurance.

There will be eight action sports stars that are considered founders and offered equity in the league, and though Bloom wouldn’t say who they were, he did hint that they were among the biggest names in skiing and snowboarding at the moment.

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

The XGL is currently in the process of negotiating with host cities for its 2026 season. Bloom said that cities have been been eager to collaborate, and some—such as Hong Kong, China—have essentially offered a blank check to the organization at the opportunity of bringing action sports there.

There are currently talks about expanding the number of sports at the winter X Games to more than just skiing and snowboarding. Bloom said there have already been conversations about bringing snowmobiling back. It’s a lot of changes all at once, in an effort to push one of the most iconic brands in action sports forward.

“Are we worried about people disliking some of these things? Not really. Do we respect the heck out of their opinion, and we want to listen, and we want to hopefully experiment together? Absolutely,” Bloom said. “Not everything's going to work, and that's okay, but more ideas will work than won't work.”