The Basics

X Games Ventura 101

The basics for new fans of X Games Ventura, get to know our events and athletes.

The Basics / Ventura 101

X Games: What Is It?

X Games is the premier action sports brand. From world-class competitions to lifestyle and culture, X Games has been at the forefront of action sports for 30 years.

X Games debuted in June 1995 in Rhode Island. Known that first year as the Extreme Games, the event was devised, owned and operated by ESPN. The name was tweaked to X Games for the 1996 summer version.

In fall 2022, MSP Sports Capital purchased X Games from ESPN/Disney.

X Games Ventura 2024

X Games Ventura takes place June 28-30, 2024. While this is the first year that Ventura has been the sole home to an X Games, the beachside city did host the majority of competitions during X Games California 2023.

X Games Ventura 2024 is the 70th X Games in history.

Skateboard, BMX and Moto X will be the featured sports at X Games Ventura, and 19 total medal disciplines will be contested.

In Skateboard, there will be men’s and women’s divisions for:

• Street & Street Best Trick

• Vert & Vert Best Trick

• Park

BMX disciplines are:

• Men’s Park; Women’s Park

• Dave Mirra’s Park Best Trick

• Street

• Dirt & Dirt Best Trick

Moto X disciplines are:

• QuarterPipe High Air

• Best Trick

• Best Whip

What's new for 2024?

Women’s BMX Park and Women’s Skateboard Vert Best Trick both will debut at X Games Ventura 2024. We can’t wait to see what two of the brightest young stars in action sports -- Arisa Trew and Reese Nelson -- have in store. There’s no doubt they’ll want to top the 720 that Trew unleashed to win the X Games return of Women’s Skateboard Vert at XG California 2023.

Hannah Roberts leads a talented Women’s BMX Park field. It’s an international discipline: Athletes from four countries already are scheduled to attend, and that number may grow as the roster is filled out.

X Games has added five new women’s disciplines to its winter and summer lineups in the past 12 months alone: In addition to BMX Park and Skateboard Vert Best Trick this year, Skateboard Street Best Trick joined the party for XG California 2023 and Ski and Snowboard Knuckle Huck debuted at XG Aspen 2024.

Skateboard Disciplines

Skateboard Vert

Though there are variations, vert ramps typically look like the letter “U,” with steep walls and a smooth composite surface. The most common X Games Vert ramp in recent years is 60 feet wide and has walls with an 11-foot, 8-inch radius, including two feet of pure vert at the top.

Athletes traverse back and forth across the ramp, pumping to gain speed and throwing aerial tricks above the ramp’s “deck” or performing tech tricks on the ramp’s coping, where the vert wall and deck meet.

The most famous moment in the history of action sports occurred on a vert ramp, when Tony Hawk landed skateboarding’s first 900 at X Games 1999. Vert currently is enjoying a resurgence, as a slew of young stars -- especially young women -- bring renewed energy to the discipline. The X Games Vert format is a jam session: athletes receive as many 30-second runs as possible within the total time allowed. At X Games Ventura 2024, the jam session length is expected to be 36 minutes. The athlete’s single best full run counts as their final score.

Skateboard Park

The X Games Skateboard Park discipline combines elements of skateboarding’s renegade history with features designed to send speeding skaters flying, rewarding flow, athleticism and hard-charging attitudes in the process.

The X Games Park course typically has aspects reminiscent of an inground pool, including coping, deep ends and vertical walls. Those designs harken back to decades ago, when skaters would search for empty pools to poach. Bowl/pool courses like the legendary Combi bowl in Upland, California, date to the late 1970s and 1980s, when transition skating grew with the vert boom.

Using the contours of the course to gain speed, X Games Park skaters hit a variety of volcanos, boxes, wedges, etc. for the air necessary to do tricks like 540s. At X Games, each athlete receives three 45-second runs. They’re judged on complete runs, and the score from their best single run counts.

Skateboard Street

Street is the most popular skateboard discipline, by far. Street contests approximate the most common form of real-world skateboarding, utilizing obstacles common to urban settings -- like handrails, stairs, ledges, benches and outdoor tables -- on a purpose-built course.

Competitors do an assortment of grinds, board flips, Ollies, flat ground tricks and more on the course. X Games Skateboard Street results are determined by the score of an athlete’s single best 45-second run. Riders typically receive three-to-four runs in an X Games Street comp.

Skateboard Street is always one of the most-viewed X Games contests on YouTube; the X Games Japan 2023 Men’s SKB Street contest has surpassed 1 million views. Street skaters like 13-time X Games gold medalist Nyjah Huston and teen sensation and two-time X Games women’s champ Rayssa Leal are among the most-followed athletes on social media (5.2 million Instagram followers and 11.3 million followers combined on Instagram and TikTok, respectively).