The X Games is an annual extreme sports competition featuring top athletes in events like skateboarding, BMX, motocross, and snowboarding.
Hours of research by our editors, distilled into minutes of clarity.
The official X Games site offers event schedules, athlete profiles, competition results, and news for both summer and winter editions—along with videos and highlights from skateboarding, BMX, motocross, and other action sports.
At the 2025 Salt Lake City X Games, Ryan Williams landed his first BMX Dirt gold medal with a triple backflip; 14-year-old Heili Sirvio and 15-year-old Arisa Trew made groundbreaking wins in women's Park and Vert Best Trick; and Justin Dowell took BMX Park gold.
The 2025 X Games Salt Lake City delivered double-digit viewership growth—up 12% across ESPN platforms from 2024—with a 328% surge among 12- to 17-year-olds.
ESPN invested a reported $10 million in the original 1995 “Extreme Games”—the production cost that launched action sports into mainstream culture and drew nearly 200,000 spectators to its debut in Rhode Island.
In 1996, ESPN shortened “Extreme Games” to “X Games” to make the name easier to translate for international broadcasts and to strengthen branding as the competition expanded to global markets.
The inaugural Winter X Games in 1997 introduced snowboarding, skiing, and snowmobile events—helping boost winter action sports’ popularity and paving the way for snowboarding’s inclusion in the 1998 Winter Olympics.
Snowboarding entered the Winter Olympics in 1998 in Nagano, Japan, featuring giant slalom and halfpipe events—a move influenced by the sport’s rapid growth and mainstream exposure through competitions like the X Games.
Tony Hawk made history by landing the first 900-degree spin in competition in 1999 after 11 attempts—creating one of the most iconic moments in action sports.
At the X Games in 2006, Travis Pastrana became the first to land a double backflip in Moto X competition, earning a perfect score and setting a new benchmark for aerial difficulty.
Bob Burnquist scored 98.00 in skateboard vert at the 2001 X Games, executing tricks never before attempted in competition—widely regarded as one of the greatest vert runs in history.
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