A Letter from the CEO: The Season is Here
Dear U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team fans,
The season is here! With our freeskiers and snowboarders ready to kick off the 2024-25 season in Chur, Switzerland, tomorrow and Saturday, I want to take a moment to reflect on this past summer and dive deeper into what we’ve achieved as we head into another season. Our talented teams ended last season on a historic note and we are excited and motivated to keep this going.
Skiing and snowboarding are a way of life for many around the world—millions of people do these sports in the United States alone. It is a lifestyle, travel and recreational activity, and we are lucky to be part of this community.
But when you ask our athletes what the best part of their sport is, whether it be launching themselves off a big air jump or racing at 90mph down icy slopes, it’s that our sports are thrilling. The adrenaline rush is unmatched. The adventure our sports take us on is something our athletes are constantly grateful
At U.S. Ski & Snowboard, we’re 10 sports, one team. We have more than 240 athletes on our rosters, and day in and day out, we work towards our mission of championing the growth of snowsports at every level and developing world champions. For decades, our rosters have had some of sports’ biggest icons and now have current stars like Mikaela Shiffrin, Chloe Kim, Jessie Diggins, Alex Ferreira and Alex Hall. The level of talent we have in the pipeline is also getting deeper, and this area is becoming even more of a focus as we work to take our sports to the next level.
It’s been a busy summer with our teams training worldwide—from New Zealand to Switzerland to South America and beyond—coupled with frequent visits back “home” to the USANA Center of Excellence powered by iFit in Park City. Our headquarters is the perfect example of what drives this organization: It allows our teams to train efficiently, push the bar higher, try new things and challenge each other. It showcases the benefits of having all 10 ski and snowboard teams under one umbrella, visible in the collaboration between the teams that helps to lead us to success.
Before we jump into this next season, I want to recap the last quickly. We had tremendous accomplishments at all levels: Four of our teams ended the year the best in the world; we took home 13 Crystal Globes, 14 Youth Olympic Games medals and 14 Junior World Championship medals; the cross country and freestyle teams had their most successful seasons in history—and that’s only scratching the surface. We also had record social media viewership and engagement and increased our broadcast numbers. Our Stifel Snow Show on CNBC, Peacock and YouTube was a massive success and told the stories of our athletes beyond the snow to a new audience. We also hosted 11 World Cup events across the country and ended the season with another successive year of record revenue. This was all possible thanks to all of you - THANK YOU.
Going into 2024-25, we’re excited for what is on the calendar. We will host the first-ever women’s Stifel Birds of Prey presented by United downhill race and the first women’s ski jumping World Cup in the United States, and Mikaela Shiffrin looks on track to rewrite history once again with her 100th World Cup win. I’m excited to see if we can top last year’s success, especially as we head into a World Championships year and with the Milan-Cortina Olympic Winter Games in less than 16 months.
With all that said, let’s get started.
DOMESTIC WORLD CUP CALENDAR - 12 EVENTS!
We are proud to announce that we are hosting 12 World Cup events on U.S. soil this season – one more than last season! Having this many domestic events is very important to our organization and the future of our sports and I know how meaningful it is to see our athletes up close, alongside the best skiers and snowboarders from around the world. Competing in the U.S. is a home-field advantage, both athletically and commercially, and directly inspires the next generation of athletes.
This season, Beaver Creek will welcome the women to the Stifel Birds of Prey presented by United in addition to the men, and for the first time, the women will have the opportunity to ski the same downhill track as the men. It’s the first time many of our women will get a chance to race on home snow, and we can’t wait. To wrap up the alpine season, Sun Valley will host the Stifel Sun Valley Finals, welcoming back the best alpine skiers in the world for the first U.S.-hosted World Cup Finals since 2017 and it will be a festival-like atmosphere with live music, food and community events. On the ski jumping front, the first-ever domestic World Cup ski jumping event for both men and women will occur in Lake Placid, NY. Freestyle will host three World Cups this season, with an exciting new World Cup in Lake Placid for our aerials team. Take a look at the full U.S. World Cup schedule here.
Lastly, through the new multi-faceted partnership with X Games, our freeski and snowboard athletes will compete in the Toyota U.S. Grand Prix and Visa Big Air presented by Toyota at Copper Mountain and Aspen—returning to Aspen for the first time since 2019. Through the partnership, X Games will host a one-of-a-kind X Games-style event following the Toyota U.S. Grand Prix at Copper.
NEW SEASON CAMPAIGN: BACK IN THE BIB
We’re starting the season with a new campaign, building off a strong summer of high social engagement and collaborations across several other disciplines. We saw record social numbers this summer, especially with our creative content around the Paris Olympics, and are still feeling the bounce following those successful Games.
“Back in the Bib” is the new season campaign. The concept refers to our athletes putting on that competition bib for the first time this 2024-25 season. Whether at the top of the halfpipe, at the start gate of a slalom, in the mass start of a 50k, lined up for the snowboard cross course, or about to go head-to-head in a dual moguls run, we’re all ready to be back in the bib, and we invite you to share our excitement. The campaign is live on social media, and we’d love to see how our fans are prepping for the season ahead! Show us by posting on your socials with the #backinthebib hashtag.
PROJECTS
U.S. Ski & Snowboard continues to focus on our Easy Green and HERoic initiatives. Easy Green is our environmental initiative, built around sharing resources and encouraging all to partake in sustainable practices at all levels of the organization. Since the initiative's launch, we are continuing our work with Greenly to measure our carbon footprint so that we can take action. Our U.S. Ski & Snowboard sustainability task force is collaborating with industry leaders in climate change on what we can do moving forward and this year, we installed more electric vehicle charging stations at the USANA Center of Excellence powered by iFIT.
This upcoming season, you will also see our Easy Green logo on race suits and patched jackets, showcasing our commitment to climate advocacy on a global scale throughout the winter.
HERoic – our movement designed to inspire and empower women to thrive on and off the slopes, specifically in women’s coaching and leadership – continues after a successful year of inspiring women’s panels around the country. Data shows a 20% increase in women coaches at the elite level since last year and confirms that women hold 67% of executive positions at the organization.
Keep an eye on our HERoic landing page for more details coming soon at events like the Stifel Killington Cup, where there will be a women’s panel and showing of woman-focused ski films, and the Stifel Birds of Prey presented by United, where we have partnered with CNBC and LionTree to bring their Lioness community to Birds of Prey for activities around the women’s weekend and more.
HOW TO WATCH
We know watching our sports is complicated and we hope to simplify this with FIS in the future, but World Cup skiing and snowboarding broadcast rights will be very similar to last year.
World Cups within the United States: We will again have every second of our domestic World Cup coverage shown LIVE on Outside. All events are free on Outside.com and the Outside app with an email address—you will not be charged if you watch the events live. Outside+ (the paid level) will have all the same events on demand. NBC Universal will also show some coverage from our domestic World Cups through the NBC family, including NBC, CNBC, USA and Peacock. Peacock will not have domestic World Cups on demand.
International World Cups: The InFront-owned skiandsnowboard.live will house all international (except Austria) events live and on demand.
Austrian World Cups: Austria holds separate media rights agreements, so all Austrian World Cup events can be watched on Peacock with key events like Sölden, Kitzbühel and others are aired on NBC.
Keep up with how to watch each event all season long on our TV listings page.
STIFEL SNOW SHOW
Last year, we launched the Stifel Snow Show, a groundbreaking new television series that followed the arc of the winter sports season each week that aired on Peacock, CNBC and YouTube, and I’m proud to report that it was a massive success. Every week, new and seasoned fans can dive deeper into our world of elite skiing and snowboarding through weekly World Cup results, interviews with athletes and alumni and more. We have officially locked in a second season, emphasizing more storytelling to give you a more in-depth look into athletes and events. It will be aired every Saturday throughout the ski/snowboard season on CNBC, Peacock and YouTube. We could not be more excited to bring it back for year #2 and to work closely again with the tremendous team at NBC.
PARTNERSHIPS
Our partnerships team has been hard at work throughout the last year, bringing in key partners who are making a difference for our teams and organization, including brands like United Airlines as our Official Airline Partner, the global leader in exercise equipment and fitness content iFit, Hydro Flask as the team naming partner of the snowboard team and Kappa as our Official Technical Apparel Partner, among others. We are celebrating a second year of record revenue growth because of this strong effort and will continue delivering on all fronts.
Additionally, we were thrilled to announce that we have expanded our partnership with Stifel Financial and Toyota around our Para teams, designed to amplify Para sports. Stifel is the official Team Naming Partner of the Stifel U.S. Para Alpine Ski Team and Toyota is the official Team Naming Partner of the Toyota U.S. Para Snowboard Team. This is the first major investment into our Para sports since the teams came back under the U.S. Ski & Snowboard brand, and we know that this is a huge step forward.
I genuinely believe that the team we’ve built at U.S. Ski & Snowboard is one of the world's strongest, led by some of the best athletes and supported by the best fans. As we start the season tomorrow in Chur, Switzerland, we will continue building on our success, pushing the boundaries and achieving more as one team. I can confidently say we’re ready to get back on the snow.
Thank you for continuing to cheer us on and we will see you all out on the mountain - Go USA!
Best,
Sophie
