Who's Watching the X-Games
I found an interesting set of articles on the demographics of the X-Games and it's pretty interesting to see how the viewership has changed as the event has gotten more mainstream.The first article is a marketing report written right after the first X-Games. This article points out that the X-Games is the ideal event for advertisers looking to focus solely on the 13-24 age demographic and points out that the viewers are overwhelmingly male.
The next article is from CNN and written just a couple years later. This article again points out how the key demographic is is young adults but what is interesting is how they are pointing to the growth of the event. It talks about how how top end athletes are making six figures a year and that MTV and Vans were trying to integrate themselves into the event and the culture in general.
This infographic was really interesting. It was the most recent year I could find a reliable breakdown of the demographics of the X-Games (2005-2006) but you can already see some important changes taking place in the viewership. For starters, you can see that women make up 43% of the market. This is a far cry from the dismissal of women as a target market in the article from before. Also the drop-off from young viewers to more mature ones is not a cliff but rather a gradual decline. This is different from the first study which basically said 12-24 was the only market worth targeting in the X-Games
Finally this article is from ESPN and looks at the Latino influence in the X-Games. The article points out that skateboarding has its roots in Los Angeles and the Latino community. There are many Latino athletes participating in the events and the author credits strong Latino viewiership with the decision to keep the X-Games in Los Angeles. According to ESPN research 47% of the attendees at the 2008 X-Games were Latino.
The X-Games demographic has changed as it has become a more mainstream sport. How do your memories and awareness of the X-Games when you were younger (and the audience was more narrow) compare to your experience today? Do you feel that anybody you talk to will be able to converse about the event or do you still think the audience is restricted to a certain niche?
Citations
Extreme Games, Commercialism Taken Too Far , http://www.performanceresearch.com/espn-xgames-sponsorship.htm, Published 1996
Extreme Sports Diving Into Mainstream, http://edition.cnn.com/SHOWBIZ/TV/9811/30/extreme.sports/index.html, CNN, November 30, 1998
Sports Portfolio X-Games Enthusiast, http://www.spotcable.com/sports_fact_sheets/XGames.pdf, 2006
Latino Influence Shapes Action Sport, http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/hispanicheritage2009/columns/story?columnist=lapchick_richard&id=4516693, Richard Lapchick, Espn, September 29, 2009
X Games, no longer bad, go suburban
Here is an article in USA today from all the way back in 2001. Even then the article was making the point that the the X-Games had lost some of its edge and had been "mini-vanned" and that sports like this were "as common — and as regimented — as suburban Little League, soccer and swimming teams."
The X-Games helped expose more people to these kinds of sports. As more people are participating in sports do you think this is positive or negative to the events in the X-Games?
Citations:
X-Games, no longer bad, go suburban, http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/2001-08-16-x-games-full.htm, Sal Ruibal, USA TODAY, 08/17/2001
