With an additional venue and a quartet of new sponsors, organizers of the Kia World Extreme Games hope to raise Shanghai’s profile as an action sports city. The event, which arrived in Shanghai in '07 as the KIA X Games Asia, announced GoPro, DC Shoes, online consumer retail portal yixun.com and South Korea’s Nexen Tires as its newest sponsors. The event will see its vert ramp portion of the competition moved from the Jiangwan Stadium to a new downtown location at the base of Shanghai’s Oriental Pearl Tower. Hass Aminian, general manager of action sports at World Sport Group, which acquired the event in '13 after Fox rebranded it the World Extreme Games in '12, said the multisport action sports event follows the same mold as the X Games in the U.S., in terms of sport organizers and content generation, only on a slightly smaller scale. "When we picked it up, we recognized that there was a need to reinvigorate the event with a new venue," Aminian said. Last year, the event created activity on the Shanghai Bund, the city’s waterfront area, which featured freestyle motocross a week before the competition in order to increase its profile. "That went quite well," Aminian said. "So this year, we created some ambitious new ideas." One of those ideas was moving the vert ramp competition to one of the city’s most iconic locations. "The Oriental Pearl Tower is the most visible icon of the Shanghai skyline," Aminian said. "By doing it at the base of this, we believe that we’re going to put this event on the map in regards to Shanghai, but also Shanghai on the map in regards to action sports." Last year, the Jiangwan Stadium hosted around 70,000 people over the course of the four-day event. Aminian hopes to see those numbers rise with the additional venue. "We think that level of promotion is going to continue to boost the event and create better attendance."
FANNING THE FLAME: Referring to when the event carried the X Games brand in the late 90s, Aminian said, "In those early years, when it traveled from Thailand to Malaysia and various areas of Southeast Asia and into Korea and then actually China, it triggered interest in every single market." Through demos and promotional events, Aminian said the World Extreme Games organizers are striving to maintain that interest while continuing to educate their Asian audience. Over the first weekend, the event will feature demos from skaters Neal Hendrix, Lizzie Armanto and Alana Smith. In addition to the demo, Smith will also compete alongside the men in the skateboard mini mega competition. BMX rider Mat Hoffman, who serves as the BMX sport organizer for the event, will also take part in a demo. "These guys will put on a show to showcase their skills over the first weekend of the event, and we’ve invited a whole bunch of media and local dignitaries," Aminian said. "We’re going to be showcasing the sport so that we’ll take care of the education part of our work." The competition will take place from April 25-May 3 and will be televised globally on Fox Sports and Fuel TV. Shanghai Media Group’s G-Sports Channel and China’s CCTV5 will also broadcast the event.
