ESPN this week is hosting leaders of its three new, int'l X Games events in Los Angeles. Top executives from local organizing committees for X Games Barcelona, Foz do Iguacu (Brazil) and Munich are attending meetings and watching action sports competition at L.A. Live, which begins hosting X Games on Thursday. ESPN Senior VP of Programming & Global X Games Scott Guglielmino said, "As we said all along, the events won't be carbon copies of each other. It's a chance to talk about what they'll look like, what events are going to be involved and what some of the social activities will be." ESPN, which held its first X Games in '95, decided last year to take what had been primarily a U.S. action sports competition and turn into a global property. It created a bid-city process and this spring awarded three new events in '13 to Barcelona, Foz do Iguacu (Brazil) and Munich. Those cities, which beat out six other bidders, will join Aspen, Colo., Tignes, France, and Los Angeles, Calif., next year to make X Games an int'l sports property. ESPN has committed to distribute 130 hours of live programming internationally around the six events. This week's X Games marks the first time that representatives from future X Games in Spain, Brazil and Germany have attended Summer X Games. Guglielmino said that they will meet with ESPN's sponsorship sales team, content team, event organization team and others in the coming days. Guglielmino: "We've broken it up into buckets. We don't want them sitting in a conference room the whole time they're here, but there is plenty to talk about."
Attendees include:
BARCELONA: Josep Mª Casanovas, GM; Xavi Cherta, Event Exec Dir; Joan Gragera, Event Services Dir; Jaume Puigdengoles, Competition Liaison & Cultural Elements; Sara Hernaez, Broadcast Liaison.
FOZ DO IGUACU: Guilherme Cozza, Marketing & Operations Dir; Márcio Ferreira, Secretary of Sports; Ken Miyata, Event Management & Operations Dir; Felipe Meretti, Marketing & Commercial Coordinator; Ruben Sarafian, Production Assistant.
MUNICH: Ralph Huber, CEO Munich Olympic Park, President of X Games Munich Organizing Committee; Frank Seipp, General Secretary; Markus Schnetzer, Dir Event Management, Sports & Competition; Klaus Cyron, Dir Marketing & Sponsorship; Marie-Christine Eckle, Dir Vision & Communication, Franz Wolfl, Technical Dir; Reto Lamm, Dir of Movie; Melanie Listl, Media Center Operations.
