Street League v. X-Games
I was listening to The Jason Ellis Show (which, frankly, has become the only thing worth listening to on Satellite Radio) the other day and Rob Dyrdek was on. It appears that Dyrdek is trying to put together a new skateboarding league for street skaters called, uh, the Street League. Here’s all you need to know.
- Invite only and you need a signature shoe to even qualify.
- First place pays out six figures.
- Last place gets five grand
- Dyrdek owns your ass.
It’s that last bit that piqued my interest. One of the rules of the Street League is that it’s exclusive. If you skate the SL you can’t skate the X-Games or Dew Tour. I thought “wow, that’s pretty jacked up,” but apparently it was the skaters’ idea. Nobody likes the X-Games and this was as good an excuse as any to screw them. So, assuming that Dyrdek gets this off the ground what you’ll see at the X-Games is Chaz Ortiz and Nyjah Houston as the marquee names in street skating.
What does this have to do with BMX? Well, a couple of things to remember. 1. When it started the X-Games was a 10 day, 40+ hour television extravaganza. It’s, really, a shadow of its former self and the Dew Tour is barely better. Remember the Gravity Games were a solid month of prime, major network sports coverage, but this year the Dew Tour was mostly relegated to super late night on USA coverage. Which is to say, the networks’ dedication to the events is, at best, waning. Secondly, remember how their used to be downhill BMX in the X-Games, then Travis Pastrana wanted to go rallying and, boom, substitution? Also remember how vert was dropped from the X-Games until Shaun White said superpark was dumb? See how Danny Way was able to get an entire new event created based on his own fever dream? BMX in the X-Games is, more than most other sports it seems, subject to the whims of non-BMX atheletes.
So, what happens if all of the big names in skateboarding take their balls and go home? Well, it’s possible that the X/Dew people will attempt to play the role of kingmakers and push the next generation (see: Sheckler, Ryan/Ortiz, Chaz/Houston, Nyjah) but they put so much press into being “the superbowl of action sports” that that’s unlikely. They could try to push some other sport, but what other sport has that kind of penetration? To put it another way (and rip off Chris Rock) if Ryan Sheckler woke up with Jamie Bestwick money he’d slit his own throat and jump out a window.
Yeah, you’ll never get the part of your life devoted to “double pits to chesty” back, but Sheckler probably bought a new Mercedes with the money he made off this web vid.
If I were a betting man (and I’m not, because I’m lousy at it) I’d say that the X/Dew people will do the most logical thing and step up the skateboarding purses…by cutting other crap. I mean, Dyrdek’s got a lot of money, but he can’t outspend The Great Satan Comcast. That being said, Disney and NBC/Universal aren’t trying to throw good money after bad. X-Games have already killed dirt and they tried to kill vert once. I’m pretty sure that the street luge guys thought they were safe when the sky surfers got the axe. I’m not saying that’s what’s going to happen, or that BMX will be the first thing to get stuff cut, just that that seems to be the most logical way this thing’ll play out.
Of course, it won’t because I think it will. Still, it might be time for Mirra to get to work on the Park League.
here’s the thing, there will always be a demand for bmx in the public eye…kids will never not be interested in people jumping bikes. So maybe the x-games will drop bmx and the dew tour will disappear but something else will come along and fill the void. However i don’t think bmx is going anywhere in the x games anytime soon, all the street luge and sky surfing sports that got replaced were cheesy sports that dont move product. I mean no one is going to go out a buy a pair of Biker Sherlock leathers to go street luge down their street, or a new sky surfing board after watching the x games. But kids will always ride bikes and i think the people at x games know that. And yes i know they killed dirt but they also added street and mega ramp, so you can’t really say that they are trying to get rid of bmx.
Jon,
I think, honestly, they’ll probably focus more on circus stuff like Mega Ramp and events that already have audiences (like rally and MX, even though rally’s never been huge in the US) while the more “traditional” disciplines will get less love. Of course, I’m probably wrong, but that was my thought process when I heard about it.