SHAUN WHITE ANNOUNCES THE LAUNCH OF THE SNOW LEAGUE
Photo: Mike Dawson
Shaun White is announcing the Snow League, a league for snowboarding and also freeskiing halfpipe competition, with its first event in the U.S. in early 2025.
Launching its first season with five halfpipe events, starting in March 2025 and ending winter of 2026 following the Winter Games in Milan.
White says “After all my years competing in many different formats in the snowboarding space, I've come to realize that snowboarding and freeskiing athletes deserve a legit professional league. Beginning next year, The Snow League will give riders, freeskiers, and sports fans all over the world a destination for what I believe is the most exciting athletic competition in all of sports. Now is the moment to elevate the next generation of winter athletes who are pushing the limits of competition.”
The first season will feature men’s and women’s snowboard halfpipe competitions at all five events. Athletes will accumulate points based on their results from each event to be tallied together at the end of the season to crown a world champion.
The total prize purse for the first season will be at least $1.5 million, representing the richest prize purse in the sport.
The Snow League’s proposed schedule minimizes Olympic conflicts and maximizes global visibility for the league. For the inaugural season, the first event will take place in the U.S., followed by four events around the world.
How will athletes be chosen?
The Snow League’s snowboarding field will be made up of the top 20 men and 16 women in the world. Riders will be chosen using a modified ranking from the World Snowboard Points List. The WSPL is the definitive universal, transparent and fair ranking system for competitive snowboarding globally.
Competition and Season Format
The competition structure and format will be different than what has been seen before. Representing the first ever competitive platform where the world’s elite athletes can compete consistently throughout the year and season over season, the league will feature 5 halfpipe events in the first season with plans for additional events and disciplines in subsequent seasons.
A prize purse will be awarded at each event. Athletes will also earn points for their results, which will be cumulative at the end of the season where an additional prize purse will be distributed to the league’s top finishers.
The events will include a training day and two days of competition with innovative formats:
● Day 1: Training day
● Day 2: Qualifying day
○ 20 men and 16 women will be seeded into four qualifying heats, each with a best of two run format. The top qualifier from each heat will advance to championship day. The next two best scores from each heat will also earn a chance to compete for the last four championship spots in another heat using an additional best of two run format.
● Day 3: Championship day
○ 8 men and 8 women move on to championship day which features a head-to-head bracket format, seeded from qualifying day with quarterfinals, semifinals, and finals rounds. A rider must win two of three runs to advance to the next round in the bracket.
It all sounds good to us, this news follows that X Games is also starting it’s own league too. You either like contests or don’t but either way, these two announcements means more exposure for snowboarding and more prize money for the riders, which can only be a good thing.