Shaun White Is Launching A New Professional Winter Sports League

By all accounts, Shaun White has already cemented his snowboarding legacy.

He’s a three-time Olympic gold medalist (the most of any snowboarder). He’s won 13 X Games gold medals (and another two in skateboarding). He owns a namesake snowboard brand, Whitespace.

There’s not much more a pro snowboarder could hope to accomplish. But since his retirement from the sport, White has found himself thinking about building a legacy outside his personal accomplishments—one that could leave the sport better than it was when he competed in it.

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On Monday, White announced the launch of The Snow League, the first professional winter sports league for snowboarding and freeskiing competition that he hopes will provide winter sports athletes their most straightforward opportunity to support themselves competing—as well as a path to being crowned world champion.

Debuting in winter 2025 with a five-event season, The Snow League will feature a global competition format. The league’s first event in March 2025 will be held in the U.S., with the remaining four held at winter resort destinations around the world, and it will conclude after the 2026 Milano Cortina Games.

The first season will feature five men’s and women’s snowboard halfpipe events, with freeskiing introduced midway through the season. Down the line, the league aims to add other disciplines, such as slopestyle and big air.

“Everything we’re doing is very calculated,” White told me. “We want to do it correct; we don’t want to have to go back on something. We want to crawl before we walk before we run.”

Athletes—the world’s top 20 men and top 16 women—will accumulate points based on their results from each event, with a world champion being crowned after the last event. Riders will be chosen via a modified ranking from the World Snowboard Points List, recognized as the definitive ranking system for competitive snowboarding globally.

Each event will include a training day and two days of competition—a qualifying day and a championship day.

For the qualifier, athletes will be seeded into four heats, with a best-of-two run format. The top qualifier from each heat will advance to the championship. The second- and third-highest scorers from each heat will enter another heat to compete for the last four championship spots.

In the championship, eight men and eight women will compete in a head-to-head bracket format with quarterfinals, semifinals and finals rounds. Seeding is based on qualifying day finishes. Athletes must win two of three runs to advance to the next round in the bracket.

Sandy MacDonald, Olympics head judge and competition director for several premier winter sports competitions, will serve as the league’s head of competition.

White says the seed for the idea that would eventually become The Snow League was planted in his brain many years ago, during a season in which he entered every single major competition he could—not just in halfpipe, his primary specialty, but slopestyle and rail jams as well—and went undefeated.

“I’d never done that before,” White said. “I’ll never forget getting to the end of the season and getting interviewed, and this person was like, ‘What an incredible accomplishment, what a season, but how does it feel not to be the world champion?’ In that moment I realized there’s such a disconnect in our sport—so many big events that don’t really feed into each other.”

There is a fluctuating but overall healthy number of freestyle snowboard events on the calendar. FIS-organized Grand Prix events and, every four years, the Olympics. X Games. Dew Tour. Not to mention resurging rail jams—Red Bull Heavy Metal, DIYX Street Jam, Red Bull Rail Yard—and the chance to blend freestyle and freeride at Natural Selection Tour.

But the gap White has identified is a significant one. These events exist in vacuums. Most major sports have a league of some kind. They allow fans to follow storylines as they develop from game to game or stop to stop, crowning an overall winner at the end of the season.

And sports fans truly identify with that format. Setting aside the obvious major leagues—MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, MLS and the Premier League—we’ve witnessed sports explode in popularity when they’ve been elevated in such a way that fans can follow along, develop favorite athletes and understand the stakes. Just look at Formula 1, the WNBA or the WSL.

“There is no one-stop destination for snowboarding and freeskiing,” said The Snow League COO Ian Warda, the former VP of global integrated marketing at Burton and operator of the annual (now defunct) Burton U.S. Open.

“The content is scattered; the media landscape is very fragmented. It’s hard as a fan to follow it,” Warda added. “Name a sport that people would recognize. Most people can start rattling off the top teams, the top players, where to watch, where to buy merch—that ecosystem of the sport, the business around it. That doesn’t really exist in snowboarding.”

Action sports is catching on, however. On June 13, X Games announced X Games League, a year-round international competition calendar with teams composed of athletes from multiple disciplines—winter and summer—who will compete for points to earn both individual and team prize purses.

Having retired only recently, after competing at the 2022 Beijing Olympics, White understands the athletes’ experience well enough to know that this is something they’re looking for in their snowboarding careers.

“I know the pain points for the athletes,” White said. “The need for the athletes is there; the want to do it is clear. It’s bittersweet; it’s a good time and place for us to be launching our league, but it’s also a bitter moment for the sport that there’s not more done to highlight it.”

NBC characterized its Pyeongchang 2018 men’s snowboard halfpipe final broadcast, anchored by White winning his third Olympic gold medal, the “most dominant Winter Games Tuesday night ever.”

And yet, White says, “the top-viewed event at the Winter Olympics isn’t having its moment after the Olympics is over.”

Two-time Olympic gold medalist in halfpipe Chloe Kim said she is “thrilled” about The Snow League. “It’ll be great to have competitions that focus more on the athletes, giving us more opportunities to shine and do what we do best: snowboard,” Kim said. “I’m grateful to Shaun for giving back to the sport and his unwavering mission to uplift it.”

The total prize purse for The Snow League’s first season will be at least $1.5 million, the highest in the sport. A prize purse will be awarded at each of the season’s five events as well as at the end of the season, when an additional prize will be distributed to the league’s top finishers.

It’s no secret that the money in snowboarding and freeskiing isn’t made on the snow. Action sports athletes are largely supported by their sponsors, who often cover the costs of equipment, coaching, travel and more. An athlete might make $5,000 making a competition podium, but depending on where they’re based and where the contest was held, that might barely cover travel and lodging.

“We’re gonna pay the whole field; if you’ve qualified to get to the event, you will get compensated for being there,” White said. As much as The Snow League is about giving the world’s elite riders and skiers a premier competitive platform, White also hopes it provides a platform for the next generation of riders to break out.

The league is backed by a who’s who of investors including Will Ventures, Ares Management funds, David Blitzer and Ryan Sports Ventures, with Range Sports advising on media rights and commercial partnerships strategy and execution.

The Snow League CEO Omer Atesman, a serial entrepreneur in the sports, technology, and advertising sectors, previously worked with White developing educational sports content for startup The Skills—similar to MasterClass, with athletes.

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The Snow League hasn’t finalized media rights and distribution but plans to have “premium on-site and broadcast production” from top-tier partners. “Everyone sees what we see; the sports have an incredible fan base, an incredible participant base,” said Warda. “Those ingredients lead to opportunities.”

The Snow League aims to have linear coverage around the world as well as more access through digital, both live and on-demand. There is, as of right now, no concrete plan for a Drive to Survive–style documentary…but a photographer travels with White and the team, capturing content in meetings or in Zoom conversations with athletes.

“There will be component of storytelling in some way that goes beyond just the live broadcast, for sure,” White said.

“One of the principles in building this is to make it more appealing to a new fan and what we would call a casual sports fan,” Warda said. “One of the reference points is this phenomenon of human interest storytelling in sports—behind the scenes and under the hood, behind the goggles, sort of developing the characters of our sport. People develop a personal connection to the athletes, how they’re living their lives, their struggles and triumphs.”

The Snow League also has the potential to create a net positive impact on the lives of amateur skiers and snowboarders who may never compete at a high level.

Some of the resorts the team is considering for its first season stops have permanent 22-foot halfpipes…but not all. The attendance and revenue The Snow League could generate means resorts may have the impetus and support to construct new features not only for the event but for visitors to enjoy long after.

“I think it’ll inspire more halfpipes to be built at local resorts because the athletes are calling for it, and when there’s a demand there’s a response usually,” White said. He also thinks it will inspire the next generation of halfpipe athletes because now there is a tour to follow.

“The Snow League really will be Shaun’s biggest legacy,” Warda said. “Bigger than anything else he’s ever done.”