TELLURIDE — It’s fair to assume Kipp Nelson is a betting man.
Not your Sunday afternoon Broncos-versus-Raiders kind of betting man, per se. Nelson’s bets are bigger than that. More like, “I bet I can turn skiing into the next NASCAR.”
In other words, Nelson is wagering he can make you watch.
“An event like this is very visual,” the former University of Colorado ski racer said while overseeing operations at his recently acquired and re-invented action sports tour, the Jeep King of the Mountain. “It’s a little bit to me like NASCAR is to Formula One. Nobody doubts that Formula One is super-legit, but it doesn’t happen in the U.S., so the audience gravitated to something different.
“I think skiercross and boardercross are a bit like that. We don’t have more than one World Cup alpine (ski racing) event here each year, and that’s a reason why the audience isn’t bigger. So I think these events are really more made for our audience over here.”
Nelson, a retired investment banker now living in Ketchum, Idaho, didn’t invent the new-school racing disciplines of skiercross and boardercross. And whether he invented the formula that will ultimately establish an audience of skiing and snowboarding fans in a nation that long has turned a cold shoulder to the sports as spectators remains to be seen. But last year’s $7 million experiment known as The Honda Ski Tour was just the tip of the iceberg. This year, he bought the competition.
“I don’t even expect to break even until year three,” said Nelson, 48. “I’m committed that far, at least.”
The merger between Nelson’s hip new Ski Tour — a three-ring sports and music circus billed as “The Loudest Show on Snow” — and the established but aging Jeep King of the Mountain series would seem to reflect a maturation of the market, consolidation in an otherwise fragmented action sports pie. Along with events such as the U.S. Snowboarding Grand Prix Series, the U.S. Free-skiing Open, FIS World Cup freestyle contests and the recently proposed AST Winter Dew Tour scheduled to launch with three events in 2008, the JKOM is poised to push the burgeoning ‘cross and ‘pipe disciplines toward mainstream recognition — to date, recognition seen only briefly at the Olympics and annually at the Winter X Games.
First, though, Nelson believes he must establish unity within the increasingly crowded ranks.
“There’s a lot out there, but what I like about that is that if you take the Dew Tour, you take what we’re doing, take the X Games, and then I think two World Cup (‘cross) events happening in the U.S., now all of the sudden you’ve got about nine different major events happening,” Nelson said. “If you think about how the ATP tour started out in tennis or the PGA in golf, they were a collection of individual events that ended up forming an overall tour. We ought to do that. We ought to have points count from one event to the next, and that will help us in a couple of different ways.
“First, it will help us with our audience, because they’ll say, ‘OK, we see the same athletes, the same format.’ There isn’t any confusion if you make it a consistent competition. Secondly, it will help make it a North American sport again, whereas a lot of these winter sports just gravitate to Europe and our athletes have to spend a ton of money and be away from home for long periods of time. That hurts their chances to compete on an international scale. The idea is to have world-class competitions at home so our athletes can get television exposure, so the public can see them and they can get sponsorship, and they can stay at home. That’s what’s going to help us get more Olympic gold medals.”
The way Nelson sees it, the one-and-done annual Winter X Games serve as the Super Bowl. He wants to offer action sports athletes a regular season.
The concept isn’t entirely new. The five-stop AST Dew Tour has seen enough success on the summer side of the equation in the past three years to follow Nelson’s lead into winter. Likewise, the U.S. Snowboarding Grand Prix series — with three annual events — has emerged as the major player among snowboard-specific events over the course of more than a decade.
Sustaining momentum
But as established tours like the former Vans Triple Crown and even the JKOM find themselves producing fewer events annually (from three down to one in the case of Vans; seven down to three for The Ski Tour/JKOM), there are obvious concerns as to how many events the industry can sustain.
“It’s a tiny, tiny market. That’s why you have to try to take all of it,” Nelson said, explaining the decision to condense the number of events while adding snowboarding and women’s competition to his formerly ski-centric events this season. “You can’t survive on just one component of it alone.”
The athletes — many of whom double as Olympic and X Games champions — are believers as well. Skiing superpipe star Simon Dumont, last winter’s overall Ski Tour points leader, credited the series for progressing the sport “three years ahead of its time” as his discipline seeks to achieve Olympic credibility. Skiercross, meanwhile, will make its Olympic debut in Vancouver in 2010, establishing tours like JKOM and the AST Dew Tour as necessities in the minds of competitors.
“I think there is no option but for it to grow,” former U.S. Ski Team downhiller turned skiercross competitor Daron Rahlves said after finishing second Dec. 15 at the first JKOM stop in Telluride. “I think this sport is so young still, we’re trying to gain a lot of momentum. It’s important for us to have a tour to establish public awareness.”
And therein lies the apparent answer to the sustainability question. “Public awareness” is synonymous with “television ratings” in America, and if skiing and snowboarding ever are to achieve NASCAR (or even pro bowling) credibility in an already crowded sports landscape, it’s going to take more than just a good show. It’s going to take prime time slots on nationwide networks.
TV exposure huge
“For us, it’s all about ratings,” said Chris Stiepock, general manager of the ABC/ESPN-owned X Games. “Television is a thankless business. You’re constantly trying to prove you’re worthy of your time slot through ratings. But if they continue to grow — as they have through the years — most entities involved are happy.”
Nelson makes no secret of the fact JKOM’s 14-year relationship with CBS factored heavily into the decision to acquire the tour. While attended by fewer than 1,000 spectators live, the Telluride event is expected to attract a large audience when it airs on the network at 3 p.m. Saturday. (“A time when everyone is sitting around drinking eggnog and are into winter sports,” Nelson said.)
The AST Dew Tour — owned by NBC Universal — has a similar advantage when it hits the slopes (and the airwaves) in December 2008. So should the X Games be nervous about their status as action sports kingpin?
“I used to be really protective of our niche and wanted to crush any competition. But now I believe a rising tide lifts all boats,” Stiepock said. “I pray for the success of the Dew Tour these days. The bigger the size of the pie, the bigger our slice. So I welcome it all.”
Scott Willoughby: 303-954-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com
