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Dew Tour brings back Breckenridge

The Dew Tour’s new operators have agreed to return the overhauled action sports property to its longtime winter home of Breckenridge Ski Resort in Colorado.

The Enthusiast Network will announce on Tuesday a four-day freeski/snowboarding competition for Dec. 8-11, which will include two prominent snow action sports industry award events owned by TEN — the 2016 TransWorld Riders’ Poll Awards and Powder Awards, taking place in downtown Breckenridge at the Riverwalk Center during the festival.

The Breckenridge Ski Resort in Colorado played host to a stop on the old Dew Tour starting in 2009.
Photo by: GETTY IMAGES
The co-scheduling of the events underscores TEN’s approach to revitalizing the struggling tour by leveraging its portfolio of action sports brands to maximize viewership and interest. TEN is promoting and live-streaming Dew Tour events across a number of its digital media brands and Facebook.

Industry veterans had long expected the tour’s return to Breckenridge, which had hosted a stop on the old tour since 2009.

Organizers say the winter stop will reprise the tour’s new approach to competition, first seen during its inaugural summer event in Long Beach, Calif., in July. The Long Beach skateboarding event included a team competition with smaller endemic brands acting as team sponsors, and also split up the traditional street course into four distinct skill challenges.

The ski and snowboarding setup in Breckenridge will be similar. Snow Park Technologies has been secured to build the courses.

“It’s not a traditional slopestyle course,” Dew Tour general manager Adam Cozens said. “We’re breaking it apart, and bolstering each component to it.”

They’re taking inspiration from longtime Mountain Dew-sponsored athlete Danny Davis’ noncompetitive Peace Park snowboarding series, he said. Davis and freeskier Gus Kenworthy are confirmed for the event. Sponsors have not yet been locked down.

The tour “slaughtered” the audience guarantees it gave to sponsors in the Long Beach skateboarding event, said Norb Garrett, executive vice president of TEN’s sports and entertainment group.

With a diminished emphasis on broadcast — the event did not air live at all on linear television — but an expanded commitment to digital coverage, unique live-stream viewers grew elevenfold over 2015, the last year of NBC Sports control, according to TEN. Also, executives said, in-person attendance grew by 73 percent and TV ratings on the delayed features grew marginally.

Garrett acknowledged the summer event fell short of its sponsorship sales target, but he thinks the vision for the tour has proved sound.

“We’ve completely reinvented the tour, the competition format, and we’re taking that same competition to ‘Breck’ and it’s going to do the same thing for winter action sports that we did for skate,” Garrett said.

The Enthusiast Network acquired the operating rights to the tour from PepsiCo in January after NBC Sports Group wanted out of the operational side. NBC remains as broadcast partner and will air two features from the Dew Tour in the weeks after the live event.

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