With Snow League, Shaun White Creates The Contest He Always Wished For

As the Snow League wrapped its first event in Aspen on Saturday, with Japanese riders Sena Tomita and Yuto Totsuka inking their names as the inaugural champions among a field of 36 athletes, Shaun White said he’d never been so excited at a competition.

Of course, White acknowledged, he’s got a lot on the line; the Snow League is his brainchild, his audacious vision for the future of winter sports competition. And he’s not aiming low.

The Snow League’s first season will feature three additional stops after this weekend’s event in Aspen, including China’s Secret Garden in December, Aspen again in February and then Switzerland in March. Though the inaugural event featured only snowboarding, subsequent stops of the tour will see freeskiing added to the mix.

In February, right before the league returns to Aspen, many of these athletes will be competing in the Milano Cortina Olympics. White knows what an immense achievement winning Olympic gold is; he did it three times before his retirement in 2022 following the Beijing Games.

But if all goes according to plan, White envisions a Snow League crown being the ultimate prize in winter sports—Olympic gold medals included.

“I had my moment, and I feel like this is the new future tour that’s gonna take these athletes to the next level, something I’ve never even achieved,” White told assembled media at the base of the halfpipe following the conclusion of Saturday’s finals. “So that’s our goal, that’s our mission.”

Take basketball, for instance, White says. “Is it more important to win the championship or the Olympics? Obviously you go and represent your country, which is amazing, but to win the Snow League tour, to be the champion at the end, is gonna be a really really big deal.”

Again; it’s audacious. But White recognizes that skiing and snowboarding competition has reached a critical crossroads. Events are dwindling—the Burton U.S. Open and Dew Tour are both gone—and, with them, opportunities for these athletes to support themselves solely by what they do on the snow.

The highest-paid skiers and snowboarders make their money from lucrative endorsements and sponsor bonuses when they win events, not through prize money. That’s where White saw an opportunity chart a new course for these athletes’ careers and income ceilings.

The purse for the Snow League’s first season is $1.6 million across four events, with men and women earning the same for each podium spot: $50,000 for first, $20,000 for second and $10,000 for third.

Every finalist walks away with something; fourth place is worth $5,000 and the remaining four finishers receive $2,500 each. That covers the eight men and eight women who advanced to finals, but what about the other 20 athletes who didn’t advance out of qualifiers? All 36 athletes received an unprecedented $5,000 appearance fee at the tour’s first stop.

“The amount of money they’re making might actually be what you’re making if you win first place at another competition. So we want to get these athletes to a place where they can afford to just be snowboarders, just be skiers, and make a living off the tour,” White told me on Friday, ensconced in the gleaming glass-plated spectator structure that would look at home on the cliffs of Malibu.

White wore a watch by the Snow League’s official timekeeper, Hublot. Parked on the snow outside was a shiny Grenadier, from the the league’s official automotive partner, INEOS Automotive. Guests could arrange to test drive it. Snow League founding partner Marriott Bonvoy’s hospitality offerings included a VIP suite from which guests could watch the event, which they did while drinking the tour’s official beer, Pacifico. On Saturday, White would present the athletes who made the podium with trophies from Tiffany & Co.

These partners embody the premium offering White is aiming to create with the Snow League.

White cites the fact that there are about 65 million global participants in golf, an expensive, high-end sport. But there are 130 million winter sports participants worldwide, with an average household income higher than that of golf.

“It’s a very wealthy group of people enjoying a very luxurious sport in very luxurious places, so that’s why we were like, let’s build the F1 of snowboarding, let’s go to Aspen and to Laax and these places people dream of attending and have these incredible events,” White said. “And that attracts an incredible roster of sponsors that want to be part of that market, and that trickles down to bigger prize purses for the athletes.”

Alpine skiing has historically attracted luxury brand sponsors like Rolex and Range Rover. Freestyle skiing and snowboarding, not so much.

“I think they didn’t just have an entry point to reach that audience that felt authentic to their brand,” White said. “So now that we’re bringing this elevated, premium experience, they’re now going, ‘Oh, okay, this might be our access into these sports.’”

Those who were willing to splurge on a VIP hospitality experience only made up one segment of attendees in Aspen. General admission to qualifiers on Friday was $20. Tickets to Saturday’s final were $60, with children 12 and under entering free with a paid adult. The Snow League also provided complimentary tickets to Roaring Fork School District students and Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club athletes.

“We don’t want to alienate or lose the core of the sport, and we want to make it accessible,” White said. “It’s like going to a basketball game or a football game; there’s these seats, there are the boxes, there are courtside seats, and we want to offer that.”

It all comes back to White’s goal to create a event with a focus on athletes at its core. Part of that is offering the biggest prize purse in snowboarding, but another crucial piece was the league’s innovative format, created as a direct result of White’s experience during his career.

“Normally what happens is you show up and there’s 40 athletes, and we run through all 40 and the top however many move on to finals. If I was the top-seeded rider, I’d wait over an hour in between runs. I’d go freeride around the mountain and be calling my coach like, ‘Hey, am I up?’”

Within this structure, White found it difficult to stay warm and keep his head in the game. He wanted to offer the athletes a format better tailored to their needs.

On Snow League qualifying day, athletes were divided into four heats. The winner automatically moved on to finals, and the last-place finisher was eliminated. But the two women or three men who finished in between were slotted into a last chance qualifier to create the final fields of eight.

The final ran as a March Madness–style bracket, where athletes were seeded 1–8 and competed head to head. The first athlete to win two runs advanced. In a twist, riders had to drop in from both the left pipe wall and the right pipe wall, adding a layer of difficulty and forcing them to mix up their standard competition runs.

White wanted a format the audience watching at home—live on Peacock, via the league’s broadcast partner, NBC—would understand intrinsically. Riders were miked so that viewers could experience all the ups and downs of the day alongside them. Taking another page from the surging popularity of F1, White’s team is also producing a documentary of the first season in the same vein as Drive to Survive to give audiences an intimate window into these athletes and their sports.

He also wanted to create dramatic storylines, and indeed, the final battles between No. 3 Tomita and No. 1 Maddie Mastro on the women’s side and No. 3 Ruka Hirano and No. 4 Totsuka for the men whipped the crowd into a frenzy.

The format asked a lot of the athletes—a rider who made it to finals would have had nine runs, compared to the more standard three in almost every other competition—and they certainly didn’t have time to stand around and get cold between runs.

But they appreciated the opportunity to get creative in a new format, one that will hopefully attract more eyeballs to the sport.

“Adding more events to the calendar is gonna create more opportunity,” said Ryan Wachendorfer. “The more times we practice these competition runs, the better we get at them.”

“The more opportunities to bring new eyes to snowboarding or get the people already involved in snowboarding more excited, the better,” Mastro said.

Early feedback from the athletes has been overwhelmingly positive, White said. At the athlete meeting before the event got underway, White implored them not to hold back in their assessments.

At that meeting, athletes arrived to find their jerseys, with numbers they selected themselves, hanging in a locker room. And it was there that White welcomed them with what they’re affectionately referring to as his Braveheart speech.

“I’ve lived the life you’re living for the past 20 or so years; I’m here to help now,” White told them.

“It’s not about the event organizers or the resort or about me; it’s about you,” White said. He recognizes that with his three Olympic gold medals and his off-snow business ventures, like his Whitespace brand, he’s been able to enjoy a level of success in snowboarding that can prove elusive.

“I truly believe with this tour that level of recognition and success can be accessible for all of these athletes,” White said. “And beyond that, I’m hoping to tell the next story of the person who just puts a big shadow on my career, that hero.”

Tomita, through a Japanese interpreter, said, “I’m so happy to win the inaugural Snow League event—this feels like the start of something big!”

If he’d wanted to, White wouldn’t have been the first athlete to compete in a league he founded. But that part of his career is complete. This is what he’s meant to be doing now.

White did take the opportunity, before Friday’s qualifiers, to serve as a forerunner in the pipe alongside 10-year-old Paizley White (no relation), a Whitespace team rider.

It was a symbolic passing of the baton, an acknowledgment that though his competitive career is over, his next chapter in snowboarding might prove to be even more significant.