Early in his tenure as the CEO of X Games, Jeremy Bloom is ready to show off some new tricks.
Bloom and his charges have been preparing an “AI judge” powered by Google Cloud for the Superpipe competition at X Games Aspen on Jan. 23-25, the first event under his stewardship since taking the job in December.
“[Judging is] a problem, as you can imagine, I’ve been thinking about for maybe three decades,” Bloom said in a video interview. “I’ve been part of subjective sports my whole life, especially freestyle skiing; it’s judged. I’ve often envied sports like track and swimming where there’s a clear winner.”
The technology will only be used at the snowboarding events for both men and women. Bloom relayed the caveat that the AI judge is still in its infancy after just six-plus weeks of development, and it will only be used as a companion to human judges for now.
Leaning on his friendship with Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Bloom reached out to the avid action sports fan shortly after taking the job with X Games. “I said, ‘Well, what if we put our heads together and tried to build the world’s first action sports AI judge with the goal of bringing more objectivity to subjective sports?’” Bloom said. “And what if we could arm judges with superpowers like we’ve armed humanity with AI?’”
The AI judge uses Google Cloud’s tools, which include Vertex AI and advanced large language models. With input from human judges as well as athletes and analysts, the platform has analyzed thousands of hours of video from prior competitions and collected metrics to measure airtime, trick difficulty and execution.
Bloom said that in trials, the AI judge was not only able to name the tricks immediately but observe the skill, nuance and execution of jumps. He also said that the AI scoring was “amazingly close” to the human scores, though medals at Aspen won’t be awarded based on it.
“We’ve uploaded the judging criteria, so it knows from very nuanced level, the degree of difficulty—which is just math—for every single trick,” Bloom said. “It knows what good execution looks like. It knows what good economy of motion is. In other words, if you’re doing a flip and your hands are sort of flailing, it knows that human judges would dock that.”
This trial run at the Superpipe competition represents one of several layers of a vision that Bloom shared in an introductory letter to the X Games’ athletes and partners that was obtained by Sportico. The new chief executive spoke of four focus areas for the series—“empowering our athletes,” “revolutionizing the fan experience,” “supporting our communities” and “restoring the edge and telling our story.”
It’s the latter part that makes Bloom’s appointment to the role so intriguing. At 15 years old, the Colorado native was the youngest male freestyle skier to be selected to Team USA. A two-time Olympian, a former world champion and a 10-time World Cup gold medalist, Bloom was inducted into the United States Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in 2012. He was also a star wide receiver in high school and named a first-team freshman All-American as a kick returner at the University of Colorado.
Bloom’s athletic story, of course, cannot be told without referencing his legal battle with the NCAA over his amateur status as he prepared for the 2002 Winter Olympics. Yet even after a brief NFL career, he kept an ear to the action sports world as a board member of U.S. Ski and Snowboard, the national governing body, while building a career in tech and private equity.
X Games launched in 1995 in a far different media and entertainment environment than exists today. Since it was created by ESPN (which remains a minority investor after selling the majority stake in 2022), the series received top billing alongside the major team leagues that its networks and over-the-air sibling ABC telecasted daily.
However, while modern media vehicles have given visibility to nearly any form of entertainment one can dream of, they have also fragmented the mass audiences that the X Games once enjoyed in its linear TV peak. ESPN remains the linear television partner, but Bloom touted its distribution pact with Roku as one of several avenues to reach the desired audience.
Additionally, fans will be able to bet on the X Games for the first time thanks to a new partnership with ALT Sports Data. Bloom said that fantasy sports are also under consideration as the series transitions toward a global, team-based format in 2026.
Conversations with potential investors about team ownership are ongoing, and Bloom did not disclose specifics. However, the leadership has been encouraged by the strong interest in ownership.
“Imagine owning the Chloe Kim team or the Eileen Gu team or the Nyjah Huston team,” Bloom said. “These are incredible athletes, great personalities, very marketable. And there’s a million ways that our owners can monetize their teams across our league.”
