Shaun White’s next conquest is converting the historic Rose Bowl Stadium into a world-class snowboarding venue.
In January, White’s company, Shaun White Enterprises, bought a majority stake in Air & Style, an action sports and lifestyle event. Now, as the property’s owner, the two-time Olympic snowboarding champion will bring the event to the U.S. next year for the first time in its 21-year history.
The dates are Feb. 21-22 in Pasadena, at a time when historically the average temperature is 70 degrees in Southern California. The centerpiece of the event will be a 16-story ramp set up outside the Rose Bowl for the snowboarding and skiing competition.
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Air & Style has staged a similar event in Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium (shown).
Photo by: AIR & STYLE
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“It’s such an iconic place,” said White, who lives 30 minutes from the stadium. “It took some convincing on our part to the city of Pasadena to explain what it’s going to look like. They were fearful that it was just going to be a music festival.”
White, 28, described Air & Style as a “grouping of youth culture” extending to the arts, fashion, food and technology as well as sports and music. His vision is to expand the event in future years to other markets beyond its other current sites in Innsbruck, Austria, and Beijing.
The action sports component is the main attraction. There will be 32 competitors split evenly among some of the top professionals in snowboarding and skiing, said Jim Steeg, the consultant hired by the Rose Bowl to manage the event. Eight snowboarders will be invited to compete and the other eight will qualify from the two earlier Air & Style events in Innsbruck and Beijing.
The Association of Free Skiing Professionals has designated Pasadena as a platinum event, ensuring top professionals’ participation, Steeg said.
In addition to the competitions, there will be skateboarding and BMX exhibitions, plus a kids zone with an emphasis on snowboarding, and displays tied to fashion, technology, gaming and art.
The cost to produce Air & Style is in the mid-seven figures, said Steeg, the NFL’s former point man for producing the Super Bowl. Nightly concerts inside the stadium will showcase national acts, booked by Live Nation, the William Morris Agency and Creative Artists Agency.
Ticket prices are $139 and $189 for the two-day event. The high-end cost includes access to the field for the two concerts, Steeg said. Separately, Legends Global Sales is selling the stadium’s suites and club seats.
Sodexo and the Legends/Wolfgang Puck joint venture will run concessions inside and outside the Rose Bowl supplemented by several food trucks.
To pull the whole thing off, Shaun White Enterprises hired Snow Park Technologies, the designer and builder of snowboard courses for ESPN’s Winter X Games and many other action sports venues, to construct a massive ski ramp on 19 acres of green space in front of the stadium.
Chris Gunnarson, 41, president of Snow Park Technologies, said he has known White since the snowboard whiz was 6 years old and they were both hanging around Big Bear Mountain in California, where Gunnarson serves as the resort’s director of snowboarding. The two have worked together on past events and traveled to Beijing two years ago to experience Air & Style.
In the foothills of Pasadena, Snow Park Technologies will put its expertise to the test in warm-weather conditions to produce enough artificial snow to build and maintain a 24-inch base over the course of three days, including a Friday practice run before the weekend competition.
To form snow, work crews will crush large blocks of ice into a fine, snowlike material which is then fed into a giant snow blower and scattered onto the ramp. A crane will be used to help distribute the snow on the structure’s higher elevations, and production crews will hand shape the base near the top of the ramp, Gunnarson said.
Snow Park Technologies will spend two weeks building the 450-foot-long ramp. To put its dimensions in perspective, the ramp will rise 60 feet above the top of the stadium press box and will be visible to motorists traveling along nearby Interstate 210, Steeg said.
Outdoor events designed for winter sports are not unprecedented at California venues. Air & Style follows this year’s NHL game at Dodger Stadium in January. Seven years ago, the San Francisco Giants booked the Icer Air ski jumping event inside AT&T Park.
“It’s amazing how these winter events are getting people interested in warm-weather locations,” said Darryl Dunn, the Rose Bowl’s CEO and general manager. “I guess if they can play a hockey game at Dodger Stadium, we can do snowboarding at the Rose Bowl.”
