Olympian Shaun White launches snowboard and freeski halfpipe league, featuring head-to-head bracket format
The Snow League/Courtesy photo
Nearly a week after the X Games announced that it will be moving to a global, team-based format in 2026, three-time Olympic gold medalist Shaun White announced his own winter sports league — The Snow League — on Monday, June 17.
The league is set to debut in the U.S. in March 2025 and will end in the winter of 2026 following the Olympic Winter Games in Milan, Italy, and will include multi-event global competitions for snowboarding and freeskiing.
White hopes that The Snow League will discover new talent in the world of snowboarding and freeskiing. Fans will be able to stream as the world’s winter athletes battle it out.
The inaugural season will feature five men’s and women’s snowboard halfpipe competitions with plans to introduce freeskiing midway through the first season. Athletes will accumulate points based on their results from each event, which will be tallied together at the end of the season to crown a world champion.
The Snow League’s snowboarding competition field will be made up of 20 men and 16 women who decide to compete. Riders will be chosen using a modified ranking from the World Snowboard Points List. A prize purse will be awarded at each event.
The total prize purse for the first season will be at least $1.5 million.
Each event will include a training day and two days of competition. After the training day, 20 men and 16 women will be seeded into four qualifying heats, each with a best-of-two-run format. The top qualifier from each heat will advance to championship day. The next two best scores from each heat will also earn a chance to compete for the last four championship spots in another heat using an additional best of two run format. Eight men and eight women move on to championship day which features a head-to-head bracket format, seeded from qualifying day with quarterfinals, semifinals and finals rounds. A rider must win two of three runs to advance to the next round in the bracket.
White is joined on The Snow League team by chief executive officer, Omer Atesmen, chief operating officer, Ian Warda, and head of competition, Sandy Macdonald.
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