(Bloomberg) -- Travis Rice has been disrupting snowboarding ever since he came onto the scene in 2001. A virtual unknown at 18, he showed up at California’s Mammoth Mountain for his first major event and sprung a backflip with a 180-degree twist across a 117-foot gap jump in the snowpark. Not only was the trick super-technical, but it also had never been performed on such an epic scale, spanning a distance as wide as two semi trailers. He was just getting started.
Now the Wyoming native is an industry legend, known for taking freestyle acrobatics—which were typically reserved for the relatively safe, man-made terrain parks of the X Games—into the backcountry in epic destinations like Alaska and British Columbia, where he snowboards off precipitous cliffs, straight down rock faces and between glades of trees. His 2011 documentary The Art of Flight, which he co-produced and starred in, would forever raise the bar for action sports movies with its sky-high tricks and cutting-edge cinematography.
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Rice may not have the household name status of Shaun White, the Olympic gold medalist now launching the Snow League events circuit—which has hopes of being a cultural juggernaut à la Formula 1. But he’s betting he can go head to head with the famous redheaded star in a bid to reimagine the future of action sports competition. After all, in the world of snowboarding, people talk of two G.O.A.T.s: White, a five-time Olympic champion, and Rice, whose backcountry stunts are so unique that they don’t fit into the rules of any mainstream competition.
Since 2021, Rice has held an all-mountain, freeride snowboard event called Natural Selection. The competition is broadcast live via custom-built race drones so immersive viewers can almost feel the fresh powder as it's sprayed from a competitor’s board.
The point is glory and fame more than prize money. Athletes, who can hail from any of snowboarding’s many disciplines, receive a minimum of $1,500 for competing, but the top prizes often come in the form of covetable objects rather than earnings; last year, the overall men’s and women’s victors went home with Rivian trucks valued at around $80,000. But big brands are always watching, scouting new talent, ready to extend sponsorship deals that can range from $50,000 to $100,000.
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On Oct. 16, Natural Selection will announce that the brand is expanding to include events for surfing, freeskiing and mountain biking, all with sponsorship from companies like Red Bull GmbH and New York sports store Yeti. “There’s a lot of overlap and mutual admiration across [these] sports, and athletes were telling us they wanted something similar,” says Rice, speaking exclusively to Bloomberg. Entrepreneurs are betting viewers do, too. Since their recent inclusion in the Olympics, these once niche sports have fast become the new darlings of mainstream media and savvy investors. Events will begin in January 2025.
Rice joins a crowded field of extreme sports disruptors, all eager to cash in on the fresh appetite for sports tourism—a sector that’s expected to bring in $1.3 trillion by 2032.
On June 13 the X Games released plans for a team sports circuit called the X Games League for its summer and winter sports, expected to kick off in 2026. In it, athletes from various disciplines—snowboarding, skiing, BMX and skateboarding—will be matched up to form cross-discipline teams that compete across a full calendar year. When Snow League makes its debut in March, White, snowboarding’s most decorated athlete, will have created the first competitive federation exclusively for snowboarders and freeskiers.
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So what makes Rice confident that Natural Selection will stand out? “We are not the road to the Olympics,” he says, speaking exclusively to Bloomberg ahead of a fuller Oct. 22 announcement. “We are a path to absolution.” What he really means is he wants Natural Selection to determine the world’s best snowboarder—rather than the best half pipe specialist or freerider—and become a viable pathway to superstardom.
The Oscars of Action Sports
Most action sports athletes, whether in snowboarding or surfing, have to choose between chasing the contest circuit to earn prize money and qualifying spots for major events like the Olympics or pursuing a film career, where sponsors pay them to travel to far-flung locales and trailblaze new territory. Rice doesn’t think you should have to choose. He’s catering to Olympic hopefuls and athletes who’ve built a career around making viral videos of extreme tricks and giving them a way to compete on the same stage.
The new verticals will be modeled after his snowboarding event, which pits athletes who typically specialize in differing disciplines (think American Olympic slopestyle gold medalist Jamie Anderson vs. French freeride world champ Marion Haerty) and will be broadcast on Red Bull TV. Some will have a live viewing component.
As with snowboarding, the events will use a selection committee to invite participants across the new verticals based on competition results and video clips from the previous year, as well as lifetime accomplishments. The top half of the competitive field from one year will be granted an automatic invite the following year. The rest must re-earn their spot.
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The sports-specific advisory committees of athletes will include legendary names such as freeskier Michelle Parker and daredevil mountain biker Casey Brown. The inaugural surf competition will be held in Micronesia in January; mountain biking will kick off with a live event in February in Queenstown, New Zealand; and freeskiing will be streamed from Alaska in March.
Prizes are still being discussed, but they likely won’t be anywhere near the Snow League’s $1.5 million purse. Last year’s Natural Selection Tour awarded just over $100,000 total, plus such prizes as Ski-Doo snowmobiles, valued at around $25,000.
There’s a hope that purse prizes will grow along with Natural Selection’s commercial success. Over the past five years, Natural Selection has raised $10 million from private investors and has a goal of being profitable in the next one to two years, says Chief Executive Officer Carter Westfall, a skier-turned-snowboarder. Yeti has signed on as the title sponsor for the snowboarding events, but sponsors are still being determined for the other sports.
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Made for Creators
Ultimately it’s content that Natural Selection does best, and where its commercial potential may shine brightest. The snowboarding events’ camera angles, courtesy of Los Angeles-based Uncle Toad’s Media Group, have been likened to video game-like footage; the tour’s first-ever competition still garners a million views per year on YouTube.
Here, too, Rice is taking Shaun White head to head, with White aiming to emulate Formula 1’s Netflix sensation Drive to Survive, with a docu-style, character-driven streaming series. Rice’s approach is more inspired by David Attenborough, with Mother Nature playing a starring role and the athletes serving as a compelling cast of supporting characters. “We want to talk about complicated elements of the sports, like meteorology, hydrology and geology,” said Rice. “That’s part of what makes natural terrain so unique.”
Turning athletes into entertainment figures is what Rice thinks is most transformative for his sport—and what will inspire the next generation.
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Take Jared Elston, a Bend, Oregon-based rider who abandoned competitions six years ago to compete as a professional film athlete with Natural Selection. Through the events, he found sponsors to pay him a salary and provide a travel budget to “create exceptional snowboard footage.” He attributes his ongoing success to a 2022 podium finish at Natural Selection that put his career “on a rocket ship.”
As Rice puts it, “Monkey see, monkey do is the greatest driver of progression, and we’re providing a platform where athletes can show the world the improbable is probable.”
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