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Shaun Neff owes his total entrepreneurial profession to the motion sports industry. As a freshman in faculty, he emblazoned his final identify on T-shirts and beanies and watched elite athletes on the X Games proudly boast his emblem as they flipped above ramps.
“It was at all times such an enormous second for them in addition to an enormous alternative to develop my enterprise,” he says.
Now, Neff is taking his X Video games pedigree to the subsequent stage, becoming a member of the model’s possession group as an investor and advisor.
“It’s a actually thrilling enterprise alternative as a result of X Video games already has such consciousness and cache with unrealized alternative. The potential for progress and growth is huge,” he says.
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X-ccelerating the X Video games
Dubbed the “branding whisperer,” Neff has a historical past of serving to supercharge brands, together with Sony Electronics, Goal, and Walmart. He plans to take his advertising and marketing acumen to the long-lasting X Video games, merging the sports activities with music, model and tradition.
Listed here are some large game-changers you may anticipate within the coming yr.
A brand new schedule
The X Video games has at all times occurred in the course of the summer time or winter, however Neff says the model will disrupt this acquainted cadence, including extra occasion qualifiers and pop-ups to the schedule.
“We’re making shifts to change into a year-round model that may present up for our athletes and our followers for extra than simply summer time and winter video games,” he says.
Extra followers
Neff believes that the X Video games, based in 1994, has misplaced some relevance. He needs to deliver it again to the forefront of popular culture by returning to what made it so distinctive.
“This is not about building a brand; the model is already huge,” he says. “It’s about rebuilding the model actually deliberately, reconnecting with its youth and counterculture roots, and in the end transcending sports activities into broader popular culture.”
Anticipate extra music to rock the stands, beginning on the X Games Ventura in California from June 28-30.
Says Neff, “We have now some methods up our sleeve to deliver collectively our occasions and the largest acts on this planet in a novel format.
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A brand new council
To keep up the authenticity of the game, X Video games is introducing an athlete council led by TV host Selema Masekela, who beforehand hosted X Video games for 13 years. The council is there to assist the superstars but in addition assist launch a few of the up-and-comers into the celebrities of tomorrow.
“It is ensuring that we’re listening to the athletes primarily and the way we’re driving and shaping the occasions, constructing new occasions, how we current them — with out them, we do not actually have something. I believe it is leveraging our star energy,” Masekela informed The Aspen Times.
Style-forward
As Neff found early on together with his Neff gear, X Video games is greater than only a sport — it is a model. The model needs to include extra creativity and self-expression into the motion.
A style of this might be seen at X Video games Aspen final summer time, similar to Japanese snowboarder Cocomo Murase‘s vintage-style sherpa pilot jacket, however anticipate extra in all of the occasions and throughout social media.
“We’re placing extra emphasis on creativity, model and self-expression, that are on the coronary heart of motion sports activities and our model,” Neff says. “We expect it’s a higher expertise for followers, one thing the athletes need, and albeit, one thing that makes us totally different from different sporting occasions on the market.”
“Spin it to win it”
Though some purists might argue that each one the X Video games extracurricular actions would possibly take the main target away from the game, Neff disagrees. It is all about progression, he says. You have to “spin it to win it.”
Neff says the modifications will not have an effect on what X Video games is at its core. “
“We’re simply opening the gates so long-time followers get extra of what they love, and new followers get to expertise these sports activities for the primary time in a means that is not daunting or unique.”
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