The X Games has launched a new logo and a new model, built for its next three decades.
Gone is the familiar red “X-and-globe” design that’s been the visual centrepiece of the Games since the early 2000s. In its place is a new “X” set in black with a negative diamond-shaped block in the center, and geometry intended to evoke the idea of speed.
According to X Games CEO Jeremy Bloom, in an interview with the Sports Business Journal:
Bloom said the new mark, featuring a hollowed-out space in the center of the letter, is an illustration of the athlete being centrally focused on going forward.
“That’s what we’re so proud about because athletes built this brand,” Bloom told SBJ. “Athletes sacrificed everything, and so to be a brand that fits in the background and puts our athletes in the foreground on the main stage was the goal.”
The new identity is part of a broader overhaul that includes the launch of the X Games League (or “XGL”), a year-round, team-based format set to debut next summer. The inaugural season will open with four franchises drafting mixed rosters (five men and five women), with plans to scale up to ten franchises and potentially even a separate winter league, as first detailed by Forbes. Internally, the league sits at “the heart” of the transformation and arrives alongside new AI-assisted judging (known as “The OWL”) for real-time, transparent (and, I’d assume, unbiased) scoring.
Launched by ESPN in 1995 as the “Extreme Games” (rebranded to X Games the following year), the X Games grew from a made-for-TV summer showcase of skateboarding, BMX, and (my favourite) street luge into a year-round global property with the addition of a Winter edition in 1997.
