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In the interest of speed and timeliness, this story is fed directly from the Associated Press newswire and may contain spelling or grammatical errors.
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X Games explode as advertisers obsess over Gen Y
Thursday August 14, 2003
By TIM MOLLOY
Associated Press Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) Jamie Bestwick's first BMX competition in
1984 was in front of 250 people, most of them fellow riders, in a
small hamlet outside his hometown of Nottingham, England.
When Bestwick comes to the X Games this week, returning for the
first time since he won a gold medal in 2000, he'll boomerang his
bike through the air before a live prime-time audience on ABC.
``With a lot of corporate input and people taking a chance on
action sports, giving it the publicity it warrants, you can make a
decent living from in essence just riding a BMX bike,'' said
Bestwick, who will compete Sunday at the Staples Center. ``I can't
think of a better job to have.''
At 32, he is twice as old as many of the millions of
participants in action sports worldwide. But his years as a rider
have allowed him to watch the competition go from skate parks to
stadiums.
This week's games which started with a team surf contest over
the weekend and resume Thursday could be the most widely viewed
in the competition's nine-year history.
The events on ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 are expected to reach more
than 110 million homes in 145 countries and territories worldwide,
spokeswoman Melissa Gullotti said. Sports include stunt
skateboarding, in-line skating and wakeboarding.
The X Games have exploded thanks to advertisers' obsession with
Gen Y and the changing way Americans play. While traditional team
sports are holding steady, there's been a boom in sports like
skateboarding and in-line skating or Aggressive In-Line Skate, as
it's known at the games.
``This is what kids are doing. This is what they're more likely
to watch as a fan,'' said Tom Doyle, a spokesman for the National
Sporting Goods Association, a Mount Prospect, Ill.-based trade
association. ``That's why the X Games are so successful. They've
been able to attract advertisers who want to watch that
demographic.''
Since 1993, the number of people who play America's most popular
team sport, basketball, has held steady at about 29 million, Doyle
said. But the most popular action sport, in-line skating, had 18.8
million participants in 2002, up from 12.4 million in 1993.
Participants in action sports are also younger than those in
team sports, which is most important to companies that want to hook
customers early. Forty-nine percent of basketball players
nationwide are 17 or under, for example, compared with 61 percent
of in-line skaters.
Why the youth appeal? Analysts say action sports tap into
youthful rebellion in a way traditional sports don't.
``They're individualistic, there's an angry aspect to it,
there's an in-your-face angle,'' said Harvey Lauer, president of
American Sports Data Inc., a Hartsdale, N.Y., firm focused on
sports and fitness research.
Lauer wrote an essay for his company's Web site describing most
action sports as ``solitary activities that not only allow the
participant to avoid social interaction, but provide an escape from
supervision and authority.''
Doyle agrees that action sports give boys in their early teens a
way to rebel, but says they're also a reaction to a way of life
that forces many youths to take part in overly regimented group
sports.
While kids of a few years ago could come together on their own
for neighborhood games of baseball or touch football, today's youth
are often pushed into organized leagues by their parents.
``A lot of parents are worried about their kids being out in an
unsupervised environment,'' Doyle said. ``There are a lot of
suburbs where you can't walk and do anything. You have to be driven
somewhere.''
Thus skating or biking with friends becomes an alternative. And
from that alternative, competition develops.
Bestwick, for example, started riding years before soft drink
and snack food advertisers latched onto action sports in the
mid-90s.
In 1998, he had a job working on compression engine blades for
an aerospace company and competed in his spare time.
``Even when you won the contest, you knew you'd be back at work
on Monday,'' he recalled.
That changed when GT Bicycles began sponsoring him. He and his
wife moved to State College, Pa., and Bestwick now trains at the
nearby Woodward Camp for gymnastics and action sports.
His sport, in which competitors launch their bikes off 12-foot
high ramps and try to drop more jaws than their rivals with mid-air
stunts, demands agility, conditioning, and the strength to throw a
35-pound bike around without losing hold or falling.
His workout routine includes power yoga and Pilates, non-impact
exercises designed to help align the body. He spends four days a
week at the gym and three days running.
Bestwick had to sit out the X Games the last two years because
of a broken ankle in 2001 and broken arm in 2002. Looking to make a
comeback this year, he has no regrets.
``It was a gamble because I had a good job and I made good
money, but l always wanted to ride in the great contests I could
never get to,'' he said. ``I took a chance and it's definitely paid
off.''
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On the Net:
http://expn.go.com/
http://www.nsga.org
http://www.americansportsdata.com
(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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