Photo: The Snow League
Shaun White learned a thing or two after 20 years in snowboarding’s bright spotlight. He won a gold medal in three separate Winter Olympics and barely missed the podium in his fourth trip to the Games, on top of collecting every other honor, award, and podium finish the sport had to offer. And it was just that lack of cohesion — all the one-off events and competitions spread throughout the sport — that made White believe that snowboarding deserved its own premiere half-pipe league.
“Throughout the season, all the major events are scattered,” White recently said on TODAY. “There’s no common thread that connects (snowboarding) like any other traditional sport. So we’re bringing all the athletes together, putting them at the best resorts in the world.”
Enter The Snow League, which White announced earlier this year as a new professional circuit designed to inject a sense of professionalism into snowboarding and freeskiing. On Tuesday, the League announced a broadcast deal with NBC and Peacock, for its inaugural 2025 season.
It will feature four men’s and women’s snowboarding halfpipe events, the first of which will go down on March 7 and 8 at Aspen Snowmass. The following events haven’t been announced yet but the league did share that freeskiing will be included in the remainder of the tour starting with the second event of 2025.
The Snow League is also offering a $1.5-million prize purse in its inaugural season that will be split equally between the men and women. According to NBC Sports and the League itself, that’s the richest in both snowboarding and freeskiing.
“I didn’t want to come back in and do the same thing everyone else was doing. It needs to be different. It needs to have elevated professionalism to it that hasn’t been seen in the sport before,” White said earlier this year. “The venue. The best pipe cutters in the world, the best half-pipes in the world. And you’re gonna get the best tricks and the most out of these athletes.”
