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Introduction: the context of the study
The history of organisation of international competitive skateboarding is very much connected to the growth of this activity in the United States and its subsequent commercialisation and professionalisation. A significant number of skateboarders became serious about competitions during the eighties and actively participated in contests seeking recognition and sponsorships. Arguably, skateboarding:
[…] became a sport with the arrival of the likes of Tony Hawk [the most successful skateboarder of all time] who started to have a clear-cut image and to push the limits […] He became the first real sportsman, real athlete. And a lot of people followed that […] They were planning routines, their tricks, because they realised that more money was flowing in with sponsors.
Neil Danns (2013, interview)
The popularity of skateboarding was boosted by the creation of the ESPN X-Games, or the ESPN Extreme Games, as they were first called. Skateboarding was included in the programme of the inaugural X-Games in 1995 and has remained there since. Skateboarding and the X-Games have formed a mutually beneficial alliance over the last 20 years and, thanks to skateboarding and few other key action sports, the X-Games have become a hugely successful and influential international sport event. Due to the increasing popularity of the X-Games, skateboarding has grown tremendously since the middle of the nineties.
Development of competitive skateboarding has largely coincided with the rise and commercialisation of the Olympic movement. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) organise the Olympic Games and acts as “the supreme authority of the Olympic Movement” (IOC, 2015). While the IOC is not an ultimate sport authority in legal terms, the Olympic Games are the biggest global event platform for sports, so the IOC is arguably the most influential international sport organisation. Over the last two decades, the Olympic movement saw several action sports, such as snowboarding, BMX and mountain biking, entering the programme of the Olympic Games. Gerhard Heiberg (2013, interview), the IOC member, suggested that this process has been largely influenced by the fact that the Olympic Games were losing their appeal to the younger audience. The IOC acknowledged this negative trend in the late 1990s and has been constantly looking for sports attracting ages between 16 and 24. Due to the...