In Action Sports, Athletes Are the New Directors, and Brands Are Their Movie Studios

The state of action sports online is strong. On YouTube, Red Bull and GoPro consistently rank among the top five sports channels for subscribers. YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki recently told The New York Times that the broad category of action sports ranks second only to soccer in popularity. Unlike other sports channels, whose online video is typically produced by large media houses, the majority of action sports video is shot by athletes and an increasing percentage of it is produced by brands.

Last weekend in Aspen, Colorado, snowsports executives, athletes, filmmakers, and fans gathered for The Meeting, an annual conference and film festival, to talk about the dynamics of creative media, where athletes are creators and distributing content is easier than ever. The event included a day of panel discussions and three nights of film screenings. It drew companies such as GoPro, Red Bull, Oakley, Head, and Stance, and professional skiers Chris Davenport, Torin Yater-Wallace, and Aaron Blunck, and snowboarder John Jackson.

"What is most unique about the atmosphere of The Meeting in Aspen is the collective willingness to share and inform," said Pat Parnell, an action sports commentator and longtime Fuel TV host, who moderated the panel discussions this year. "I'm not sure you would get the same openness and honesty out of the majority of companies outside of the action sports industry."

The Meeting, first held in 2005, was originally a way for Aspen Skiing Company to screen feature-length movies with segments shot at its ski areas: Aspen, Aspen Highlands, Buttermilk, and Snowmass. Aspen Skiing included other films around those films and hosted a meeting for the snowsports industry in conjunction with the film festival. The event has predominantly featured films from big-name media houses. That type of film is still there, but The Meeting has decidedly shifted its conversation to digital content and the changing roles of athletes and brands. This year's panels were noticeably light on filmmakers, favoring instead the marketers, agency reps, and journalists that are focused on building online audiences.

"More and more brands today are moving away from traditional sponsorship, moving much more toward being a creator and collaborator," said Issa Sawabini, a partner at Fuse Marketing, which advises brands like Mountain Dew, New Balance, and Gatorade on youth marketing. "In some cases they can handle that in house, and in some cases they're moving toward having a much more vocal seat at the table with a production partner."

Shorter films and other digital content produced directly by those brands have a growing foothold in marketing budgets. The companies that own that content have greater freedom and control over how that content is distributed.

"Brands have always been charged with finding ways to share their messages with audiences. So over time we've become the best distributors of content through a variety of channels, becoming like studios," said Nick Tran, vice-president of integrated marketing at Stance. "Because of that, we have athletes pitching us on unique and creative ideas they're passionate about. It's about finding ways to integrate these things with our brand to create a seamless story."

The partnership involves aligning an athlete's story or performance with a sponsor's values, message, and audience. Brands that collaborate with the top athletes stand to make millions of impressions through something like a four-minute video, and as they produce more content, their online audience grows: Red Bull has 4.6 million YouTube subscribers; skier Candide Thovex's latest One of Those Days videos has been viewed nearly 17 million times on YouTube.

"It's not too different from the movie industry where you have the distributor and the actual studio that produces the film," Tran said. "We have athletes serving the role of the director, us serving the role as the producer, and publishers serving the role as the distributor."

The most-talented athletes are creating, producing, and distributing their own content with the support of brands they endorse. And those brands, in turn, are supporting the athletes' personal projects.

"Athletes are the most authentic source of a lot of content, because they're the ones actually doing it," Tran said. "It's a new dynamic. Brands have become an authentic content channel with audiences that athletes and creators want to reach."