Nitro Circus enjoys a good stunt
One of action sports’ fastest-growing phenomena is Nitro Circus, a global touring company that specializes in noncompetitive stunt shows. Founded by motorsports icon Travis Pastrana, it’s taking a different approach to the modern digital age compared with X Games or Dew Tour.
Unlike those event-first properties, Nitro started as a TV show in 2003 and now is tackling in-person events. That
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A member of Nitro Circus performs during rehearsals for an event in Scotland earlier this year.
Photo by: Getty Images |
entertainment/video production mindset still drives the company, and the live productions exist to drive interest in the digital video and vice versa, said Brett Clarke, global head of business development and marketing partnerships.
“In our business, it’s very much a flywheel approach, in that the content feeds the touring and live entertainment business, and the licensing and sponsorship, which in turn creates more and more content,” he said. “It’s all very cyclical.”
Nitro’s athletes are under contract, so Nitro Circus can sell both the events or digital stunt videos to potential advertisers or sponsors as a single package. About a year ago, it launched Nitro Circus Media Productions, a 40-person shop that’s producing “hundreds of hours of original content,” Clarke said.
In July, Nitro Circus will run its first competitive event, the Nitro World Games in Utah. As an example of how all these action sports events want to use live events to drive digital video impressions, Nitro plans to create 150 shareable video clips from the lead-up and execution of the event.
Dew Tour's 'always on' strategy
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Skateboarder Sean Malto performs in a video used to promote a Dew Tour event set for July in Long Beach.
Photo by: Dew Tour |
The Dew Tour’s title sponsor and its new operating partner, The Enthusiast Network, have put online video near the top of the tour’s priorities, seeing it as a way of better covering the modern action sports culture and generating more impressions.
Norb Garrett, TEN’s executive vice president of sports and entertainment, emphasizes that its twice-yearly live events remain a major emphasis. The first, a skateboarding challenge, will hit Long Beach on July 23.
But the “always on” content strategy offers new ways of promoting grassroots action sports culture, new inventory to sell to brand partners and an outlet for creative athletes.
“They’re living and breathing skating, they’re getting up every day trying new tricks and filming it,” said Mountain Dew brand marketing director Sadira Furlow. “It’s their way of getting data on their performance to continue instigating and progressing themselves. We’re seeing that out there for us as a brand; why wouldn’t we want to take advantage of that and give consumers more of that type of content that they’re creating themselves?”
X Games stay front of mind
Seven years ago, X Games launched the “Real Series,” a group of action sports competitions done entirely through digital video. Five years later, it launched the weekly ABC showcase “World of X Games.”
Today, both are centerpieces of the X Games’ strategy of expanding its brand beyond the major events and
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A crew tapes scenes for X Games’ “Real Series.”
Photo by: ESPN |
remaining front-of-mind for audiences year-round. With the explosion of do-it-yourself content, X Games can sell itself as a distribution partner, too.
Before it aired free skier Tom Wallisch’s world record attempt, ESPN featured BMX rider Cam Zink’s successful world record backflip and a profile of snowboarder Sage Kotsenburg, among many others. A second project with Kotsenburg is coming, said his agent, Steve Astephen of Wasserman.
The projects lead to TV programming but generate content across the X Games’ entire digital and social footprint, said Tim Reed, ESPN’s vice president of X Games.
“The utility as a whole to do these projects is really, really solid, when you think of all the different platforms one project can hit,” Reed said. “So that’s what we’ve been making sure we do — our weekly show also has the value across all of our platforms.”
