X Games Wasn't Broken. It Was Under-Imagined — with Jeremy Bloom

[00:00:00] Jeremy, it's good to have you here. It's always good to see you, Dan. Yeah, so we're not going to talk about your past, maybe a tiny bit of it, but we're not going to talk about your past, although it's a rich past, being a CU Boulder star. The one thing I do want to talk about is NAL and how you have a history with that. We're not going to talk about you as an Olympic athlete. We're not going to talk about you as an NFL football player, but we're going to talk a lot about what you have on your head with X Games because I think that's really interesting.

[00:00:27] So I want to use this time to mostly talk about kind of what you do now and looking forward in time, how that evolves, what you've already kind of been redefining, and how AI works into all of that.

[00:00:41] So why don't we start there and stay there, but I do want to make sure we come back because you had part of your history way before there was the new rules in college sports. You kind of touched on that and made some real contributions there. So I want to come back to that at some point, but I want to start right with X Games. So tell us about your involvement in X Games, when you got involved and what you're doing with it because you're doing all kinds of crazy stuff with it.

[00:01:11] You know, it's impossible to talk about X Games in the future without looking a little bit behind in my life because, you know, this was a brand started in 1995 when I was about 13. I mean, Ray, as I passed the tipping point of wanting to be an Olympic athlete, skiing, freestyle skiing, which was very much adjacent to the X Games. So the X Games really had a profound impact on my life as an athlete and as an aspiring freestyle skier.

[00:01:39] And I just, I loved the movement. I loved the movement in 95 where a bunch of outcasts and misfits, self-described. Yes. But back then. They wore it as a badge. I mean, that was the whole brand. Yeah. Something that probably still is, yeah? I think so. We hope so. Certainly back then. Certainly back then. But, you know, a lot has changed in 30 years. What was those kind of sports back in that day? I mean, what was both on the winter and on the summer? I mean, those sports were really just beginning to emerge, right?

[00:02:09] Well, that's the thing. Back then, skateboarding wasn't thought of as a sport. In fact, it was an activity in downtown you could get arrested for. I mean, you rail slide the wrong rail and you're going to jail. And, you know, BMX biking and moto and all these other things. And, you know, Travis Pastrana and Tony Hawk. Tony Hawk, yeah. Ultimately, Sean White. You know, they burst onto the scenes. And really because of what the athletes did and the brand that was built inside of ESPN, 30 years later, all these sports are in the Olympics.

[00:02:37] BMX in the Olympics going on its third Olympic cycle. Same with skateboarding, of course, skiing, snowboarding across halfpipe, big air slope style. So the X Games... And those didn't exist. I mean, when you think of like a big air and to think that there was a period of time not that long ago where that really didn't... I mean, people would ski and they'd put on their big skis and they'd, you know, ski down hills. They'd do moguls. But they didn't do halfpipes. That's right. And so... What's the origin story of halfpipes?

[00:03:04] The origin story of halfpipes were people just in backyards of ski resorts trying to build bigger jumps and envisioning what it would look like to be able to jump wall to wall, basically. So you had a quarterpipe. You know, people would do quarterpipes, but then you had nothing to jump off of. And then, you know, somebody had the idea of, hey, what if you could go wall to wall? But yeah, so big impact on my life as an athlete in the past and, you know, sort of helped shape the type of athlete I wanted to be. And what was your ski?

[00:03:33] I was a freestyle mogul skier, so bumps, jumps, and flips. My sport was a demonstration sport in the 1988 Calgary Olympics, a full Olympic sport, 1992, which was in Albertville, a place called Tignes, France, where Edgar Gros-Beron from France won. And that was really when I saw that on TV. I'm like, oh, my God, I want to be Edgar, you know, at a young age. I think it was 10.

[00:03:57] And so, yeah, that, you know, whether it was Edgar or the Olympics or the X Games, they had a huge impact on ultimately the athlete I wanted to become. So let's stay there. Let's stay when X Games and the sports that became X Games, when they were getting first introduced. So tell us, bring more, bring that more to life. 95? 95. You know, Ron Semio was the vision behind this. And Ron was a senior executive at ESPN, more on the action sports side.

[00:04:25] And he had this vision to go bring alternative sports to mainstream. And, you know, through that vision and through great execution, they created this counterculture that really took off. And the X Games back then, remember, there was no social media. And so if you wanted to see these sports as a casual fan, you had to wait a whole year, you know, until the X Games came on board or online, I guess you should say.

[00:04:50] And it was really the never-before-seen tricks that propelled X Games into the stratosphere. So that was Tony Hawk's 900. That was Travis Pastrana's double backflip. Sean White's perfect 100.

[00:05:04] But the X Games sort of take us into today needed to evolve a long time ago and sort of sat stagnant, I think, inside of ESPN and thought of as a 2000, 2005, you know, vintage product that would work in today's age. But the problem is with social media today, you're four seconds away from finding any trick you want and it's free forever. You don't have to wait a full, you know, 12 months later.

[00:05:31] And so the vision that I really gravitated towards and the reason why I wanted to accept the job to be CEO. When was that that you? It was about a year and a half ago. It was just a year and a half ago? Gosh, it seems like at least four or five years. It feels like 10 to me, but the vision of creating a league with storytelling 365 days a year around these tricks, who's in competition, who's hurt, who are rivals. Well, you mentioned real quickly creating a league, but that's a big part of what you're doing.

[00:06:00] And maybe talk about Formula One and talk about other types of sports that have a league-based system. But it didn't exist for X Games, but it's starting to exist in more and more different type of sports. Well, in today's climate, with all the social media and the streaming and the proliferation across linear TV and the Netflix of the world, it's really hard to keep people's attention. And so if you have one event every year, it's really hard to create storytelling around that.

[00:06:30] And so for the X Games, we wanted to create a league with teams. We wanted these athletes to be on salary for the first time ever, health insurance stipends, these types of things. But we wanted to create more interesting storylines. And I think you can look at leagues like the WNBA. For so long was a league that really struggled, struggled to get people in the seats, struggled for good media deals, et cetera. And then they really leaned into good storytelling with Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese was really the tip of the spear, right?

[00:06:59] A little WWE going on there. Protagonist antagonist, right? And that really worked. And look at the value that is now being created at the WNBA. In fact, you look at team valuation multiples. There's not another team that's trading for more, almost 13 times revenue. And so they've done a wonderful job telling stories, giving people more of a reason to watch games and teams than just the basketball game themselves.

[00:07:23] And so I think those and others serve as models and inspiration for us as we're thinking about building out this X Games League. Yeah. And the X Games League, as I understand it, there'll be, you know, called high net worth, maybe even private equity, who will actually buy the rights to a team and sponsor a team. And then they then own that team? The rights to that team. Right, right. Tell us more about how that works. So we took eight teams to market, four in the winter, four in the summer.

[00:07:52] And we sold all eight teams to high net worth individuals, to private equity, folks at SPVs, but a great group of not just investors, brand builders. So we have people all around the world now who have a deep invested interest of growing. Who are the eight? And there's still just eight because you just got this one. There's only eight. We can go up to 20, but we'll take our time to get there. So who are the eight teams? On the summer, it's LA, New York, São Paulo, and Tokyo. Oh, so it's international right out of the gate. It's international right out of the gate, right?

[00:08:21] The winter side is a little bit more North American focused. That was only because we sold teams a lot faster there. We got to pick summer cities. We didn't ultimately get to pick winter cities, but it's Whistler. It's Golden State, which is San Francisco and Tahoe. It's New York. They have two teams, winter and summer in New York. And what's the fourth team I'm spacing? It's Golden State. Whistler. No Colorado. New York. Yeah. And Park City.

[00:08:52] So those are the four teams. And no Aspen yet because we strategically wanted to keep that for an expansion team because there's 27 years of history and brand building. And we think that's probably the crown jewel of all 20 teams. So we'll take our time to launch the Aspen team. But yeah, those are the eight teams. Great. And what type of ownership groups are around each of the teams? A little bit of a mixed bag.

[00:09:19] You have the group in New York that is half private equity and sort of half athlete representation. So the former president, UTA, and a big private equity group got together and did an SPV for that team. LA and Park City, they're owned by a guy named Alan Thorpe, which has a rich history in startups and tech and a lawyer by trade. A big supporter of the United States Olympic Committee, those types of things. You have a group in the UAE that bought the São Paulo team. That's interesting.

[00:09:49] Yeah. And of course they want a team over in the UAE and events as well. But Bob Bernquist, who is probably the most famous global skateboarder of all time. I mean, Tony Hawk and Bob Bernquist sort of 1A, 1B. He runs that team. And the ownership group in the UAE, the skateboarding backgrounds, families sold their business for a lot of money. So they really gravitated towards that team. So it really is a collection of, you know, family office, private equity folks that have been around the space. Yeah.

[00:10:18] So what this means for the athletes, not just the current athletes, but athletes who have created kind of a track record for themselves, a brand for themselves, and now are past their career. Talk about it from their lens, what you're doing and what you're creating. Yeah. And why is it so interesting and valuable to them? You know, I was an action sports athlete, so I know how hard it is to get sponsorship dollars. I would knock on doors in my neighborhood, you know, as an aspiring 13, 14-year-old.

[00:10:46] And these athletes, they've never had a professional team to strive to play for, unlike baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer, et cetera. Your only path was the Olympics and the X Games once every, you know, every year. And now really for the first time, you have real professional teams. Like, for example, the Sao Paulo team is not all Brazilians. It's athletes from all over the world. It's just the Sao Paulo team. Just like... Just like soccer, yeah. Well, just like the Dodgers, right?

[00:11:13] You get a bunch of famous players from Japan, but they play for the Dodgers, and that's really what matters. And so really for the first time in these sports, you're going to have athletes, kids, and current athletes aspiring to be on a professional team. And once you're on that professional team, you get a salary for the first time ever in action sports. You get health insurance stipend, all of your travel covered to all of our events, and the winning team gets half a million dollars. So we're putting more into the athletes' pockets than anybody in action sports, and rightfully so.

[00:11:42] We're the X Games. That's what we should be doing. But that is a big underlying sort of effort why I gravitated towards this role to try to give back to these sports, these athletes that I felt have deserved these types of opportunities for decades. Yep. And we're going to come work our way in this conversation to AI and the future. We're going to talk more about that. The X Games, a year before you got involved with it, tell us what it was then.

[00:12:10] And as you were coming into the X Games, you were beginning your conversations. What concepts that you're doing now were already in discussions then versus how much happened over the last year and a half since you've been in the seat? So most people don't realize that the X Games was sold in 2022. So it was bought by MSP Sports Capital, which is a great private equity group. They owned the controlling interest of the McLaren F1 team for a bunch of years. They recently exited that. A big part of the Phoenix Suns and a bunch of pro soccer teams.

[00:12:40] And they bought it from ESPN with the vision of creating a league, Jeff Morad and John Najafi. And ESPN actually liked the idea so much they asked to stay in the deal. So they are a minority shareholder. And really that was the vision in 2022 of launching a league. And what I would say is carve-outs are hard to begin with. And, you know, the X Games was never a business inside of ESPN. Really? It was a brand inside of the broader portfolio of Disney, for God's sakes.

[00:13:08] That's interesting that they didn't operate it as its own business. It was not operated as a standalone business. In fact, you know, when you talk to folks at ESPN, really the benefit, one of the big benefits for them and the X Games was a hospitality play. And so these big sponsors would come in for the NFL and the NBA. And they would take those folks to the Aspen X Games and wine and dine them. And they loved it. It was just part of the broader package. And they would work in the X Games. So the business was not bought with a bank account, with a CRM, with customer data.

[00:13:36] I mean, it really was a shell of great, incredible brand, nothing around the wrapper. So I think that led to two really difficult years for the X Games. And also, before you go there, how many X Game events were there and how geographically dispersed were those events before 2022? You know, 27 winter X Games. Most of them, most all of those in Aspen.

[00:14:03] About 30 summer X Games because it's once a year for 30 years. They tried in 2014 to go around. Wait, wait, let me make sure I understand that when you said 27 in Aspen, that's 27, not 27. One per year. So it's just one time per year in Aspen. Yeah. One time per year for summer. Pretty much. So it was basically an annual event. Annual event. That was what it was. Summer moved around a little bit.

[00:14:32] It was at the Staples Center for a long time in L.A. And winter has not really moved around at all. Gotcha. It's been in Aspen. There was a couple early years where it was on the East Coast, but then they settled it in Aspen as their home. Gotcha. Gotcha. So one event per year for each of them had gone on for 27 years. Geographically, it would pretty much be in a single spot or a little bit of movement. Yeah. That was only in 2022. So they're pulling it out of ESPN.

[00:15:02] And what was part of their vision was to set up teams. What was other parts of their vision as they started sharing with you? You know, I think the primary vision was a league. And Jeff Morit and John Najafi, who owned the McLaren F1 team, saw the value being created with Liberty in partnership over a five-year period of what a global league can do. And what is very much an individual sport of F1, there's one driver. It's really a team sport. There's so many people behind them. So the Constructor Cup, things like that.

[00:15:31] So I think that's really what shaped in the color of the vision. But did they have the vision that it was going to be in a lot of different locations as it became a league? Yeah, they definitely felt like it would be a global league. There was a lot of questions unanswered. Like, how would you tether the teams? Is it the monster team versus the Red Bull team? Is it the U.S. team versus Australia? Is it the purple butterflies versus the pink birds? Like, you know, like, how would you – the naming convention was TBD. We had to figure that one out. How would the league work? What are the mechanics of the league?

[00:16:00] You can't just, like, snap your finger and say, okay, here's all the league rules. So I ended up hiring Annie LaCache, who is the number two at the WNBA, worked directly for the commissioner, and asked her to run league operations for us to build out the framework, the operating framework for how this league works. And is one team male and female on the team? Yeah. There's not a male league and a female league. That's right. It's a competition where they contribute to points based on their team scores.

[00:16:28] I think it's one of the coolest parts of our league. It's the only co-ed league that we know of. They compete together, five men, five women on a team. And they're competing with their respective sexes, right? The women against the women, the men against the men scoring points. But what was really cool this year is we have what's called a league MVP. And the league MVP is objective, not subjective. It's just based off total points. The men literally compete with the women who scored the most points.

[00:16:55] And this year, our league MVP was a skateboarder from Japan, a 15-year-old female who scored more points in our league than any other male. And so we crowned our first ever female 15-year-old skateboarder who literally beat Nigel Houston. Like you name it, beat every single guy to score the majority of the points for her team. So, yeah, it's a really cool and compelling concept. And it's going really well.

[00:17:20] And I know you mentioned five per team, but obviously there's a lot of injuries in that sport. So how does the bench work? Yep. How do they select which five? I assume there's got to be a lot more than five people playing in the team. There's only 40 drafted athletes. That's not a lot. There's hundreds of incredible athletes across BMX and skateboarding. So if you have an injury on your team, you can call up a free agent for that event, which happened multiple times.

[00:17:48] In fact, New York, who ended up winning on the very last run in the very last competition in New Orleans with a walk-off fourth place, which we can get back to. They had a Nigel Houston go down in Japan, and they brought up Jagger Eaton, who's a defending Olympic medalist from Tokyo. And he got a very important, I think, fourth or fifth place that ultimately helped determine the championship. And so, you know, the free agents turned out to be very important.

[00:18:16] And then Jagger got a share of that $500,000 because he got points on the board for the team. But I think, you know, we call them undrafted free agents. They're competing alongside the team. And it's a great sort of talent pool for GMs to look at, like, who they would want on their team next. But also, as we start to sell expansion teams, there's an incredible pool of free agent talent that that expansion team will be able to go draft. But let's kind of turn on the winter for a second.

[00:18:42] How many different types of events are there in the winter X Games? So winter X Games has skiing and snowboarding across halfpipe, big air, slopestyle, and knucklehawk. But what about, you know, snowmobiling? Yeah, snowmobiling is not part of the league. But we've had it part of our events for many, many years. Just like moto on the summer is not part of the league yet. But it's part of the event. So we have what's called spotlight events.

[00:19:11] Well, you know, we brought snowmobiles back to Aspen this year. They had a seven-year departure of the X Games. We were excited to bring them back. That's so hard to watch. It's scary. It's like, oh, they're hanging on with one hand and way up there in the air. And you're like, man. You don't want that machine to find out. That could go really bad. Those are heavy, bulky machines having owned a couple of those. Yeah. But I would say we're very curious about adding new sports to the X Games. And I think the spotlight apparatus, that product, is the right way to do it.

[00:19:39] We put two new spotlight events in New Orleans, including Scooter Best Trick. Scooters have never been part of the X Games. And it was fascinating to get fan sentiment, look at minute-by-minute ratings to see, ultimately, is this a sport that the action sports committee wants? Part of the X Games in the league. And so I think we'll remain curious of trying new sports and seeing how they rate. And when you say scooter, tell me. It's literally a scooter, just like your kids scoot on. It is a massive global sport, a huge kid community,

[00:20:08] and a very polarizing topic in the endemic action sports circles. People love it or hate it. I'd never found somebody right down the middle. But by the way, that was a good conversation start and created a lot of noise and buzz. Skateboards are that way too, right? Well, I mean, skateboarding is very endemic. It's like very cool. Yeah, but the fact that skateboarding was starting as that type of sport, I mean, parents weren't overly comfortable with it. Yeah, that's true. It's getting hurt. It's come a long way. Yeah, a long, long, long way. Yeah.

[00:20:38] Wow. So the dimensions in which you guys can expand, you can expand a number of teams, a number of geographies where you have events, a number of sports per event, and you could expand into the non-physical world, which I've seen some stuff from you there too. Yeah. So talk about bringing back online brands, online gaming brands, especially with X Games. I mean, that was a no-brainer for me, somebody that grew up playing Tony Hawk Pro Skater as a video game.

[00:21:07] And I said, where's our video game? Where's our video game strategy? And I ended up meeting the chief commercial officer at EA at the Masters two years ago, Paul Carnes. And Paul and I were just talking. I was relatively new. But I said, hey, we got to get back to gaming. So we just started having a conversation. They have a skate franchise called Skate 4. It's been around for almost 20 years. It's the biggest skateboarding game in the world. And so we worked out a partnership where we did a deep integration with the X Games.

[00:21:34] We modeled our championship venue, which was the Superdome in New Orleans around the game. And for the first time in skate history, their video game history, you could have competitive play. So you can be an X Games athlete. The metrics are off the chart. So we're thrilled. They're thrilled. But I think it colors in a broader opportunity and strategy. Like, why shouldn't there be an e-game platform in our events? So when we're having a physical event, we're also having a virtual event.

[00:22:01] Anyone around the world can play the game, win an X Games gold medal, win prize money, those types of things. And you make it more an inclusive property if you're allowing gamers to sort of begin in a really authentic way with our own video games. So we'll see where that goes. But we're just thrilled with the integration with Skate 4. Yep. And geographically, where have you had events either as part of the league or other X Games events or last year and a half? How many different geographies?

[00:22:30] Currently, most of them are North America. LA for the summer, Aspen for the winter, historically. We do have an event in Tokyo, Japan every year. We've had that for our fourth straight year now. And obviously, as we build into teams, we want to go to these team markets every year. So we're working on a strategy to get to San Paolo every year. And Tokyo, we're already there. And Park City and somewhere in Tahoe, right? Because, you know, we think it makes authentic sense.

[00:22:58] If you're going to cheer for Golden State, if you're going to cheer for New York, you should have an X Games in your backyard at least once a year. Yeah, for certain. And then once you start establishing that, you know, there's no end in sight for what geographies can be brought into it. Yeah. I mean, look, when I got to the business, there was not a lot of people who felt like we were going to have success selling teams. What the heck is an X Games team?

[00:23:21] And I can't say it was easy, but once we sort of figured out what the packaging was around it, it happened quite fast. And I got to lead all those pitches. And I think it was really fascinating to see what people are looking for. But, you know, we think that those ownership groups are more important than their capital. And we're already seeing it. But they're hiring brand teams, marketing teams, sales teams. And they're helping to tell these stories in authentic ways in all these communities around the world.

[00:23:50] And we feel like that's a tide that is just lifting all boats as it relates to adoption for this league. Yeah. And I assume the players for team get paid by the team owner, not by the league. Well, there's some nuance there with the structure of the league. But we actually pay the athletes first and then get reimbursed through, you know, basically the way our league works. But ultimately, they pay for it. How do salaries get determined at this point? Yeah, that's also a bit unique. They're standardized across the board. Everybody gets $30,000.

[00:24:21] So everybody makes the same amount. However, prize money depends on who wins the most. I think we had nine athletes make six figures this summer just to do their prize money and things like that. And then obviously the bigger names will have more endorsement opportunities, things like that. And social media platforms alongside us. So they have other ways of marketing themselves. If they're creating their own personalities, if they're creating. Yeah.

[00:24:50] So when you think of the UFC as a model for what you're building, how does that relate? Because UFC has been extraordinarily successful over a long period of time. They took a franchise. UFC has a franchise that was dead. I mean, dead in the water. I don't even think it was operational.

[00:25:11] At the time they stepped in and revived it, they had to recreate kind of what the rules are so that it could be re-welcomed into being a sport. And obviously that's a sport people can get hurt in, which is not unlike your sport. So how did you view them and what they've done with it is create something that's of enormous value.

[00:25:33] And they used some of the model that came from boxing world, but they also recreated, re-imagined the whole model of what it meant to be a league of that type. And how athletes get selected for the big bouts and how they get paid and the whole gamut they reinvented. I think it's a great model for us, especially on the value creation side of what they did. A sport that was nothing to multiple billions in value.

[00:26:02] I think they did a great job in sort of shoulder programming with the Ultimate Fighter. Again, it's storytelling. Anybody can get two people in a ring and beat the crap out of each other. People want to know the stories behind them. Why should I cheer for this person? And so we did a four-part docuseries called Dropping In that's on Disney Plus and ESPN app and across all of our platforms of telling stories about who these athletes are. Because what was clear when I got to the X Games, there was a decline, right?

[00:26:29] I mean you looked at five, six straight years of ratings decline. But I never saw that the X Games was broken. I just felt like it was underimagined and under-innovated. And just in a year and a half since I've been here, I mean we grew our TV audience year over year just in the summer 78%. We had over 18 million people just in the U.S. watching on TV. We're not even a TV demo. We're a young demo. We had 200 million video views. Those were our young audience.

[00:26:57] But to put an 18 million person number on the board, I mean that's more than the people that watched the entire Wimbledon tournament in the United States. And to grow at 78%, we grew the Aspen X Games triple digits. We put a 15.3 million number up. It was 10 the year before. So it's clear to us like the X Games future is incredibly bright. We're building a tremendous amount of value for everybody around our ecosystem, including the athletes but certainly the owners.

[00:27:25] And teams are in such demand right now that we're looking at two to three, potentially four times the price of selling the next team than we did the first eight. And each team was eight figures in the beginning, right? So it wasn't a nominal check. But more so than anything, we're just excited to put action sports back where they have always belonged at the pinnacle of sports globally. And we're not trying to build the biggest action sports league in the world. We're trying to build one of the most respected global sports leagues on the planet. And that is our Northern Star.

[00:27:55] Yeah, no doubt. And a sport that you have a long history in, which has got to be incredibly special. It's very rewarding. Very rewarding. Just fascinating. And talk a little bit about, because you were a tech, I think it's fair to say, tech entrepreneur before that. So how did you as a tech entrepreneur, building upon your earlier experiences, prepare you for what you're doing now? Well, so I was with the Philadelphia Eagles. And the NFL had this cool program.

[00:28:24] You could take MBA classes at Kellogg, Harvard, Stanford, or Wharton, and they would get you in and pay for it. Wharton was in my backyard. And so I went to Wharton. Peter Lenneman, who's a professor there, was a professor there. I just really connected with him. So he let me sort of intern after practice. He had this private equity firm. And I just got really inspired about tech. And so after my playing days, I didn't want to go into coaching, didn't want to go into TV. I just wanted to start as a beginner again. And I wanted to be in the startup space.

[00:28:51] Moved to Silicon Valley, co-founded a company called Integrate. We were an overnight success 10 years later. It took us a bit. But, you know, had a great exit in 2021 to private equity. And then ran the business inside of the private equity firm for three years before meeting Jeff and John. And, you know, ultimately going back to the X Games. But, yeah, look, I thought I would be an enterprise software my entire career. But this really has brought your two worlds together. Because you're, and we're going to get more into this, you're a tech entrepreneur right now as well.

[00:29:22] Yeah. As we're going to talk, you know, quite a bit about that. But it's also your passion, your sport, your, you know, where you spent your performance of a year. So your two worlds. Completely colliding. You can draw a better opportunity for you, at least, you know, from my vantage point. I completely agree. And, you know, 13 years in tech, loving tech. And that's a long time. That's longer than I was, like, a professional athlete. I thought I would be there the whole time.

[00:29:51] And so when I took this opportunity, of course, my worlds collided in some spectacular way. I mean, really one of the first people I called was a dear friend of mine who we've played every sport under the sun. Literally every Wednesday we'd go to Stanford and play a different sport. Sergey Brin, who co-founded Google and obviously has contributed to innovation in this world, unlike almost nobody else. And I called Sergey and I said, hey, you know, I'm going back to sports. And I said, I'm not playing, but I'm going to run the X Games. And, of course, he knew what the X Games was.

[00:30:21] And I said, listen, like, we see all the time the wrong team lose because of human error. We saw it in the 2019 NFC Championship game, the LA Rams at the Saints. We saw the wrong F1 driver hoist the trophy. Wait, what was that one? Remind me what that one was. Oh, my gosh. So 2019, the Rams Saints. Drew Brees drops back on 20-yard line, wide open receiver to end the game. The most blatant pass interference call you've ever seen. The ball was like five yards in front of him and the defender pushed him.

[00:30:48] And for reasons we'll never know, the ref never pulled out his flag and they ended up losing that game. And even then, you can't overrule that call today. You can't overrule that call. Pass interference is... Even to this day, you can't overrule that specific call. You can't overrule that call. And so 45 players on that Saints roster never played in the Super Bowl. And so these moments would tear up my heart as a former athlete. I know what people put into this. So I'm like, Sergey, you're at the tip of the spear with AI.

[00:31:13] Do you think AI, Gemini, whatever, could do anything to create more objectivity in these sports to make sure we're always sort of finding the right ending? And he loved the idea and vision. So he started coding OWL. Yes. OWL.ai, right? Yeah, that weekend. Which is a startup that you're a big part of. Yep. Separate from X Games, I think, right? Sort of incubated inside of Google and X Games, for sure.

[00:31:39] And then spun out as an independent entity that's raised its own capital and is flying away from the nest. But yeah, no, I mean, really Sergey and I founded OWL and started building it together. And now it's sort of off on its own. Yep. Well, tell us more about OWL.ai. You kind of touched on it. I know about it for a lot of reasons. But tell the audience more what you really mean by using AI to take some of the subjectivity out of who wins, who loses, who comes in first, who comes in third.

[00:32:08] So basically, you know, I got hired in December of 2025. I'm sorry. So basically, I got hired in December 2024. And had about six weeks to launch new technology at the Aspen X Games. So, you know, Sergey and I put our heads together, got a bunch of great engineers from Google. And what we wanted to do is just test it live on air. Could it be a judge? Could it show up as an objective judge? So the first thing we had to do is, like, teach it how to be a judge, you know, just like you would teach a human.

[00:32:38] And then teach it how to understand style, which is a huge part of our events. It's not just the technical degree of difficulty. And we had no idea if it would work. Anyway, had a ton of fun. Put it live on ESPN. Because it's one of those things you know. If you have a trained eye, you know great when you see it. Yeah. But to try to tell, you know, I know AI isn't a dumb computer, but in some ways, AI is still a dumb computer. Yeah.

[00:33:00] You got to help it understand, you know, what is considered, you know, great, not great. It can't figure that out. Took a lot of trial. And it still is, I'm sure. I mean, it's probably anything but where it will be two years or three years now. It's not perfect yet. But, you know, we put it live on ESPN. We asked it to do a couple things. The first thing we asked it to, by the way, this is one camera at the bottom of the halfpipe. We asked Al, our commentators asked Al on TV. He said, hey, you just watched practice.

[00:33:28] Tell me who you think is going to win, first, second, and third. And it's got a human voice. And it said, here's the reasons why. And here's the reason why. It went against Vegas odds and ended up being right. So that was our first, like, are you kidding me? Like, you know, that was incredible. And then we further advanced it. An athlete would finish. And we'd say, what do you think the projected score should be? And it would put up a projected score. And at least one example this year, our commentators had the athlete in second or below first place.

[00:33:58] Al had the athlete above. And the judges are not looking at this, right? And Al was right. And so the judges are like, oh, my gosh, I got to, like, you know, study up on that. How did it – that wasn't the first thing you did to train it. No. There was a lot of training before it got to that point. At that point, it was years of training, right? Because it was a year later. But it's an incredible tool because it can speak 50 different languages. It turns out when you build a really good judge, you've also built an incredible coach.

[00:34:28] Part of the problems with lots of sports globally is you don't have institutional knowledge in the city. Well, let's pause on that. That was an important thing you just said. So if you're building a really good judge, you're building a really good coach. Because now an athlete could be taking runs on their own and ask OAI, you know, how did I do? How could I have done better? Is that what you mean by coach? Yeah. So, you know, if you're a freestyle skier in China, you have much less chance of making the Olympics

[00:34:56] because you're not around great coaches that have institutional knowledge. So the idea would be can you democratize intelligence at a coaching level so that any athlete globally can have a coach in their pocket? So you download the app, you upload your videos, you literally have a coach that's an Olympic level or X Games level. So that's certainly an area of curiosity. And the coach in that case, I'm imagining out loud, but the coach would give you feedback on if you want a higher score, you need to do this a little bit different. Right. Here's my run.

[00:35:26] What would you do differently? Including style points, I would imagine. A hundred percent. But now the technology is deeply integrated into pickleball. So all the professional pickleball matches when a call is contested, OWL does the replay. And what's interesting, you know, a lot of people say, yeah, just like Wimbledon, which is correct. But that's Hawkeye, which is hardware. So it's millions of dollars of hardware around the court. OWL is doing it with all software, just iPhones and feed from the broadcast and a control center here in Boulder.

[00:35:54] It's the governance technology at Super Motocross. So if there's an infraction, the OWL says that's an infraction. Of course, it's across the X Games, across everywhere. Shaquille O'Neal just launched a new dunk competition called Dunk Man, where the technology that analyzes how hard was the dunk, what was the velocity of the dunk. So, you know, the team is doing a great job, you know, getting wide across lots of different use cases.

[00:36:17] Really what it's becoming is a live sports vision platform, taking moments that happen on the court, structuring the data, and using that structured data for commentating, judging, coaching, analytics, all different types of use cases. And there's a human in the loop aspect to it as well, right? It's not outright replacing judging for... Hasn't replaced a single judge yet. Yeah, but it's certainly probably even helping the judges get better at what they do,

[00:36:45] but it also helps judges see stuff that... It can't be easy to see exactly what's happening as quick and as... You know, in a world where sports betting is now over $20 billion a year, referees want this. Refs want some layer of objectivity because when they make a bad call now, it's not like it was 20 years ago, 10 years ago, where it's like, oh, my team lost. Thousands of people lost lots of money.

[00:37:11] And so when you talk to referees, even at the highest leagues like the NFL, you've got a pipeline problem. There's not a lot of people that want to be refs anymore. It's a pretty thankless job. Yeah, it is. And so this technology shouldn't replace refs, but it should help keep them honest so that they don't make mistakes, which ultimately I think we can all agree on. Yeah, no, that makes sense.

[00:37:34] So big application of AI, I will AI, but AI is probably has all kinds of other implications as you look into the future in what you're doing. You have some other kind of forward-looking examples of how you see AI. For example, we talked about bringing X Games brand into online gaming,

[00:37:55] and you talked about even during live events, having online gaming, but there's going to be the hybrid world as well between AI maybe is participating in events, AI is augmenting the participation of humans in events. What other kind of things do people kick around when they're talking about the future of AI as it comes to what X Games want to be? I think ultimately we'll get to a point where every fan gets to consume however they want. They can pick their commentators.

[00:38:24] They can pick their camera views. They can pick the level of sophistication that the commentator is talking. And I think we'll be able to build out sort of virtual worlds of how we want to watch our events. And I think that's going to be really cool because it'll bring a unique angle, an element to the fan experience, which we really can't do today. And so I think that's a little bit in the future, but I don't think it's too far away. But I think broadly speaking, and we're seeing this across all sports with the amount of capital coming into sports,

[00:38:51] the one thing that AI can never replace is tie game, 30 seconds left, fourth quarter. That's what it can never replace. And it can never replace the scarcity of the asset, right? So the NFL, there's only going to be 32 teams. And the NBA, we just saw the Lakers trade for what, 12 billion. And that was up from 10 billion two years ago. And people are saying, what in the world are these valuations being created? One, scarcity, which is, I think, has always existed in sports.

[00:39:20] But massive tailwinds from institutional investors who are looking at their portfolio and saying, if AI can rewrite this entire industry overnight, do I really have a diversified portfolio? And so I think we're going to see for the next, for many, many years, a tremendous amount of smart people, great capital coming into sports ownership because it really has been the most resilient asset class since 1960. In fact, it's returned 13.5% every year across the major sports.

[00:39:50] That's more than software. That's more than any other sector since 1960. And so I think us and many other rights holders across sports will benefit from that. And it's global brand, global leverage. I mean, you have something like the Lakers. The Lakers mean a lot more cross-globe today than Lakers meant 10 or 20 years ago. And that's nowhere close to that in sight when you're building a global brand. And next games, you're starting with the mindset of, as you're rebuilding it, rebuilding it into a global brand.

[00:40:20] Yeah. I mean, you're looking at the NBA going global. You're looking at the NFL now going global. I think a lot of these big sports brands like, oh, maybe we've tapped the TAM in North America. But goodness gracious, there's a lot more people than North America to go build your brand on. And, you know, we're a different, we started global from day one with our league. But yeah, we all see a lot of opportunity outside the U.S. Yeah, no doubt. No, that's exciting.

[00:40:46] And the other big thing that's happening when the topic of AI comes up is how are people going to be spending their time? You know, how are they going to spend their time 10 years from now? And we're going to have a kind of a private summit in a couple weeks. And that's going to be a lot of the topic. Let's look forward in time. And with AI having more of an influence of what's going to shape the world. Yeah. What are people going to do?

[00:41:10] Because there's going to be a shifting of how people spend time, what they spend time on, as well as a shifting of the ability to create content, create experiences that intersect where they're headed.

[00:41:26] So one reason I think a lot of activity exists within the world you're in, creating experiences, is because there's going to be more people who are going to be in a position to want to be part of creative experiences 10 years from now than there are today. They're going to have more time for that, perhaps, on a global level. And they're going to need stuff to stimulate them to be involved with, to be part of. How do you think about that?

[00:41:51] Well, I think it's hard to know how we will spend our time professionally in 10 years because of all the reasons that you sort of mentioned. But I think it's a fair bet to say humans will still enjoy experiences. And we'll probably have more opportunity to enjoy it. We could have more opportunities for those experiences. And real world experiences, not exclusively real world experiences, certainly immersed in kind of the software universe will be part of it as well.

[00:42:19] But needing and wanting and having time available to be out there in the physical world, experiencing things is going to, I think, grow in terms of time proportion. But certainly what that's going to look like 10 years from now. I mean, robotics enabled by AI, I mean, that's barely even scratched the surface. And how does that intersect with humans are doing 10 years from now? I think live event businesses are well positioned on the experiential side.

[00:42:48] It's concerts and obviously sporting events, things like that. And I think some of us are hoping that life becomes a little bit more casual in the future. We don't have to work so hard maybe. But I don't know, TBD. Well, I think the people who like working hard are going to continue to work hard. It's just going to feel different as every year goes by.

[00:43:08] And I don't, you know, I think you'll be able to, I mean, I'm in a spot in life now where the work I do is stuff that I can choose to do and choose to do more of things I enjoy and less of things I don't. So that's kind of a luxury I have. But one thing that's not resulting in is me doing less. Anything, especially enabled by AI, it feels like I'm doing more now than ever. And I think a lot of people are going to follow that journey as they have opportunities to do so.

[00:43:34] And I think a lot more people are going to have a lot more opportunity to kind of select their course going forward than it certainly existed five years ago, 50 years ago. So that's going to be part of the evolution as well. It's going to be exciting. Yeah. So I kind of teased earlier about one thing I do want to talk about from your past because it's changed the college sports world dramatically over the last few years.

[00:43:57] And that is, you know, the world of being a college athlete and your opportunities to get paid for the value you're creating. It was a big way the way I look at it. Seems like a fair concept. It seems like a fair concept, particularly if you're in a capitalistic society. Why should you be part of creating enormous value but not be able to benefit from it? Instead, be tapped on it back and say, someday, you know, you'll benefit from, you know, doing what you're doing now in college, but we can't pay you today.

[00:44:25] And tell us about your history on that topic because it's pretty fascinating. So my first Olympics, I was 19. It was a year after I graduated high school and I had not entered into college yet. So I came into the University of Colorado as an Olympic athlete and ranked number one in the world in my sport. And I had endorsements to pay for that. So I had a goggle sponsor, a ski sponsor, a boot sponsor. And you need those as an Olympic athlete. These are really expensive sports.

[00:44:54] And so I accepted a full ride scholarship to play football at the University of Colorado. And I'm entering school and I get a note from our compliance department that said, hey, we don't think you're going to be eligible to play because the NCAA is saying you can't have any endorsements if you want to play amateur football. And I was like, well, that seems hypocritical because Ricky Williams, who was running back in Texas, played amateur football and professional baseball at the same time. So he was getting paid over a million dollars playing baseball while playing football as an amateur.

[00:45:23] And Drew Henson did the same thing in Michigan. And they said, well, we don't care. You can't do it. So I did what any 19-year-old would do. I sued the NCAA. And it was a fascinating journey to sue the NCAA at a time where I was really just focused on sports. And I didn't have the global perspective I do today across business or anything else.

[00:45:43] Ultimately, Judge Hale, which Boulder District Court was the judge, he was a big catalyst for where we are today because he was the first judge ever to, in his conclusion, to say that student-athletes were, in fact, third-party beneficiaries of the NCAA contract, which meant student-athletes had rights. And you could look back in the course of history of all these lawsuits getting thrown out because the NCAA would say, well, they're not third-party beneficiaries of the contract. They don't have rights in our system.

[00:46:10] So that led to the Alston case and the O'Bannon case and ultimately where we are today. So Judge Hale did us a great favor back then if you're for NIL. But what was so fascinating to me and somewhat frustrating, if I'm being open, at 19, I was trying to convince people that I should own my name, image, and likeness. And so should all these other human beings that are United States citizens. Forget their age.

[00:46:37] And you couldn't get people to understand that. People were like, no, they're amateur. It's pure. They shouldn't own their own name. Like, you think, in what world do corporations own your name? Like, that's all. So it was a bit foreign. Obviously, we've come full circle. I'm completely displeased about how it played out and at the lack of preparation from the NCAA. I hate the transfer portal. There's a bunch of things.

[00:47:06] Well, it was thrust upon by – But that's ridiculous because – you're right, but it's ridiculous because they had 30 years to plan for this, 20 years. I mean they – Well, they used that 30 years to resist it, hoping it would never happen. 100%. That's your spot on. They spent every dollar and every second fighting it. Instead of being in a room, hey, guys, if this ever happens, what should we do? Like, why? How could you – talk about failed leadership. And so then it was the Supreme Court case that ultimately unlocked all of this, which was unanimous, by the way.

[00:47:36] The Supreme Court's not unanimous on anything. They were on that. And so this whole NIL was thrust into a system with no planning, which is really frustrating. And ultimately, it'll clean itself up over time, but it's completely dysfunctional right now. Yeah, and how – I mean this is a rhetorical question, but how many athletes – and I'll focus on football since that's a higher injury sport –

[00:48:02] how many athletes had a college career, did really well for the college, their college filled up stadiums, brought in all kinds of revenue, and they never got a chance to get paid as a pro because they got hurt? 99%? Yeah, and those – most of them don't go off. They don't necessarily get as good an education because they're playing sports. Now they're done with college. They're done with their sports career. And their ability to earn money came and went. Yep.

[00:48:32] And that's just not right. It's not right. Not right at all. So this is a first for Bear Roars, having a sibling of another person who was on here. And actually your sibling was on here twice. So I like to joke as accomplished as you are, NFL, Olympic skier, college football, entrepreneur, head of X Games. But your family has a lot of rich history.

[00:49:01] And Molly was the other guest. And she told a lot about her story and about her story growing up and feeling the pressures of being your brother and how you guys have another sibling, a younger one. And he was very accomplished in his academic world and how much pressure she felt. And then she also talked about your dad, I think, in particular, if my memory is right.

[00:49:26] What was it like growing up in the Bloom family and, I mean, all the incredible stuff that your family has done over the years? I think the dynamic between our parents was just spot on to create high achievers. But that sort of still had some empathy. My dad was a hard charger. You know, like you could never make excuses if you failed or you fell down or if you got hurt, you get back up. You don't blame your coach. You don't blame your teacher.

[00:49:55] It's all about, you know, not blaming other people. Where did that come from from your dad? I mean, every parent would like to hear their kids say that, but that's a lot harder to do than... It came from tough love. You know, it wasn't just... Did he grow up in an environment like that? Oh, yeah. My grandfather flew 17 missions over Berlin in World War II on a B-17 bomber. So you can imagine the toughness that Jerry Bloom, his dad, had.

[00:50:24] So, yeah, I think he saw a lot of that growing up. And he was pretty tough, but he was also very loving. And that was the one thing that Aaron Sorkin missed in the movie. But as Aaron told me, it wasn't a documentary. It was a Hollywood story. But I think my mom was... And the movie you're describing, of course, is Molly's Game, which was about your sister's story and the very accomplished directors who you just referred to there. Yeah. Very interesting. So my dad was all about being the best you possibly can be and trying to win gold medals

[00:50:53] and trying to be the best in the world no matter what it is. He never pushed us into sports or whatever. But whatever you're doing, you need to try to be the best. You want to be a trashman? Great. Be the best one ever. Like, that was his force for us. And then my mom was like, I don't really care what medal you get. I care if you're nice to other people. I care how you carry yourself. I care how you give back. Like, that was really her stick. And if you're ever sad, come here. You can always cry to me. She was really soft. So I don't know, man. Like, you know, my sister built the largest underground poker game in American history

[00:51:22] only to see it coming, crashing down from the FBI. And it turned into this huge movie that Aaron Sorkin wrote and directed. My brother, a Harvard-educated and trained cardiothoracic surgeon at Mass General, perhaps the best hospital in the world, taking over the entire practice. And then sort of, you know, me doing the sports stuff. It is a bit unusual to see siblings that are very different paths have the level of success and accomplishment that we have. But I think it's really all due to credit to my parents of how we were raised.

[00:51:52] And what do you, now you're a father. You're a husband. Your kids are growing up. But they're still young. How do you take that into you as a father, you as, you know, family member? I'm still learning. You know, I have a five and a three-year-old. So I'm still relatively early on that journey. I don't think I'll be as hard as my dad was. Not because I don't think it was the right way to do it.

[00:52:20] I just don't really have that in me as much. I mean, we were the first one on the chairlift every single weekend. Like, the very first. And we didn't stop skiing until the very end of the day. I'm not really built that way. I don't care if my kids ski. I want them to be good skiers. But I sort of, like, want them to be on their own journey a bit. I also want to push them. Life's not easy. There's not a lot of people that are cheering for you out there once you get into life and think you've got to go prove it yourself and, you know, make good friends and allies.

[00:52:48] But at the end of the day, it's up to you, I think, to go find greatness. And so I hope to instill those values in them. I hope to instill the never be a victim. Don't blame other people. I believe deeply in that, whether you're working for a company or anybody. Like, nothing worse than a victim in a company or on a team can just break morale. Especially if you're, like, a son or a daughter of a Jeremy Bloom.

[00:53:10] You know, the last thing people want to hear you as the offspring have a woe is me kind of attitude about anything. If anything, you're held to a much higher bar than the average person is. And, you know, how do you help them understand that that's the journey that awaits them and prepare them for it? You know, it's interesting because, you know, when you look at how someone's parents raised them

[00:53:36] and how that person's grandparents raised their parents, they don't follow the same patterns. I mean, they swing almost as a pendulum sometimes. You know, the one who grew up with the most intense parent doesn't... Doesn't always become intense. They don't become intense. And then maybe their kid becomes a real intense parent. You know, who knows? It's an imperfect science. I mean, times change too. Generations change. And the world your kids are going to grow up in is entirely different than the world you grew up in.

[00:54:05] I just want my kids to have hard work deeply instilled in them. Whatever they do, I want them to understand the benefit of working really hard. Because that ultimately, as I look across the things that I've been involved in my life, it comes back to, was I willing to be the first one there and the last one to leave? Am I willing to do more than anybody else? Am I willing to not blame anybody else for losing and be on this discoverable path for myself? Like, why did I lose? And calibrate versus that.

[00:54:33] I just think if humans are willing... If we're willing to work really hard, whatever we want to do, to me that that's a fulfilling life. No matter if you win a gold medal or make it to the Olympics or whatever, if you're committed yourself to greatness, greatness being a parent, greatness being a coach, greatness being whatever you do, I just think there's a lot of fulfillment. Just being a person. You know, being a good person. Being a good person. Like, I just feel like there's so much fulfillment on the other side of that. Yeah. Boulder, Colorado. You're in Boulder still. Why Boulder?

[00:55:03] The more places I've been to, the more I realize how much I love it here. Born and raised in Loveland, Colorado. Stone's throw away from here. Went to school here, obviously. Moved to Philadelphia and Pittsburgh as I was playing in the NFL. Moved to San Francisco to build the tech company. Moved to New York to build the East Coast sales team. Lived in lots of different places. I think it's hard to find a place that I love and feel more deeply connected to than Boulder. I love that. Why? What is it about Boulder?

[00:55:31] I mean, I obviously have my strong opinion on that too. But from Jeremy Bloom's perspective, what is it about Boulder? And what is it about Colorado that makes it feel so special? A bunch of things. One, we're an outdoor family. This is the outdoor paradise. I mean, I love all the open space here. I love how easy it is to find a trail. I love how conducive the roads are for biking and things like that. But I also, I really love the mixing pots of culture here. The openness to other people.

[00:55:59] The lack of people who are pretentious. There's plenty of people who have a lot here. They don't need to tell you about it. They don't need to drive. You don't see a lot of Ferraris driving by. I think that's cool. I think life is so much more than how much you've made and the success that you've had and grounded in health and fitness and taking care of others and contributing to society. I just find that to be in abundance here. And you go to LA, you don't see that.

[00:56:26] I mean, it's all an arms race of who's more famous and who's made more money. And I think there's far things. I think it's one of the most toxic traits in the world. And so I love that about here. Plenty of people have been very successful, but don't think they need to be the smartest in the room. People lean into authentically supporting others here more so than other competitive markets. I mean, that big contrast between Silicon Valley, which I've never lived in.

[00:56:56] I've never been directly part of that world. But what is described is there, everyone's trying to outdo everyone else. They want to hold things close. They want their relationships, their ideas. They want to talk a big game. But here, people want to see each other be successful and great things and support one another, recognize one another a lot more so than most kind of tech ecosystems. So I think that's a big deal, too. I think it's a great place and has a great future as well.

[00:57:26] I mean, I think a lot of us are leaning in because we see the opportunity to keep a really interesting trajectory here with Sundance coming to town and creating more of a vibe. We want to get it back to being a place where young people want to be, people in their 20s. Families are starting to be less populated here than they should be. Well, there's a bit of an affordability crisis.

[00:57:50] Big affordability crisis that we've got to, you know, we're not going to solve affordability in Boulder in a way where all of a sudden it's not expensive here, but it could be much more accessible. Yeah, I agree. Much, much, much more accessible. That's certainly within the realm of what can be achieved here by being a bit more focused on doing that.

[00:58:10] And we've got to work with our political side of the house here in Boulder to get them to realize that they've got more ability to influence that than perhaps they understand. And we need them to be more committed to that. So I think we could, as great as Boulder is today, it could be even more interesting as every year goes by if we, you know, if we all kind of rally around each other. And both X Games and Owl.ai are considered to be headquartered here in Boulder because obviously you're here and you guys still co-office?

[00:58:40] Yeah, still co-office. I mean, the X Games seems pretty spread out, but we use that office off Walnut to come together. And so, yeah, that's the X Games Owl office. However, Owl is growing so fast and hiring so many people. I don't know how much longer the co-office thing is going to work. Well, I got something to talk to you about as soon as we're off camera on that one, which I think you're going to find a really interesting thing. And so let's close this by looking at Jeremy Bloom 10 years from now, 15 years from now. And we talked a bit about your family, so let's put that to the side.

[00:59:09] We talked about the future of X Games, but what do you see your aspirations to be as you look forward in time? I'm a dad first through and through. And so I think whatever the next 10 years will be sort of predicated on what are the needs of the family, like what's best for the kids. So, you know, that's my first priority. And so I don't really know. It's so unexpected because, as you know, kids change so much over a period of time.

[00:59:38] But I think whatever is the best for their development gives them the best chance to have a fulfilled life, whatever that means for them. I'm all for. So that's my northern star. So I don't know. I have no idea where I'll be in 10 years. Absolutely not. I suspect you're still going to be with X Games because the future you have in terms of taking that from what it was when you got there and being spun out of ESPN to where it is now to the opportunity you have going forward.

[01:00:08] It feels like where the UFC was two years after they revived it. And that compared to now is, you know, is monumentally different. And I think you have that opportunity. You're the right leader to take it there. And, you know, the combination of your tech background and your playing in the sport background. Yeah. It's just going to be exciting to see where that goes. And I appreciate you spending a little bit of time here and telling us about the future of X Games and sharing a little bit more about yourself. Always a pleasure, Dan.

[01:00:37] It's good to have you here in Boulder. Absolutely. Thank you for all you do. Oh. This community. Absolutely. All right, man. All right. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Bear Roars. Check out Stretch, the new song from Dan Caruso with music by Jason Mendelsohn. Available now on all streaming services. If you enjoyed the episode, please like and subscribe on your listening platform.

[01:01:00] This podcast was produced by Loud Bear Productions and edited by Hannah Schmetzer with support from Kendall Weinberg, Alex Kim and Gibson Siegert.