action-sports
(3)
X Games sold the big moment. Now it sells the whole season.
The action sports institution has turned individual daredevils into teammates and cities into franchises. Its first league season offers a glimpse of the business behind the tricks.
Nitro Snowboards
Nitro Snowboards is a rider-owned snowboard company founded in 1990 in Seattle by Tommy Delago and Sepp Ardelt. Exclusively focused on snowboarding for 35+ years, Nitro designs and sells snowboards, boots, bindings, splitboards, outerwear, bags and accessories to riders worldwide. Known for innovations such as the mini-disc binding system, the TLS lacing system and early splitboard and asymmetric-camber designs, the brand builds most of its hardgoods development out of Oberammergau, Germany, and runs its board, binding and graphics work from Salt Lake City, Utah, while remaining independent and privately held.
Trace
Trace is an Austin, Texas sports technology company that uses computer vision, GPS sensors and AI to automatically film youth sports games and edit a personalized highlight video for every single player - no camera operator required. Originally founded as AlpineReplay to track skiing and snowboarding, the father-and-son team pivoted to team sports and built one of the largest video datasets in youth athletics. Trace has delivered millions of automated highlights to over a million athletes and raised a $47M Series C at a reported $190M valuation.