The Professionalization of Action Sports: Mapping Trends and Future Directions

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Corrigendum

This volume is being published at a critical moment in the history and development of action sports. While these activities have undergone rapid growth, commercialization and institutionalization over the past five decades (Booth and Thorpe 2007; Rinehart 2000; Thorpe and Wheaton 2013; Wheaton 2013), the inclusion of surfing, skateboarding, sport climbing and BMX freestyle into the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and the ongoing politics regarding the possible future inclusion of other action sports (see Thorpe and Wheaton 2011), mean we are witnessing major structural changes at the global level. These changes are trickling down with considerable implications at national and local levels, and in the everyday lives of action sport participants. As international sports organizations with little understanding of the unique cultural dynamics within action sports seek to incorporate these activities under their own structures for the primary purposes of audience building and wooing corporate sponsors, the axes of power are shifting. While Olympic inclusion brings these issues front and centre, it is important to note that such processes have been underway for many years. Mega action sports events such as the X Games (Thorpe and Wheaton 2017), the increasing involvement of transnational corporations (Thorpe 2014) in tandem with the growth and diversification of locally owned action sports companies (Bouchet, Hillairet, and Bodet 2013), the emergence of mainstream media houses and the multiplication of photographers and filmmakers (e.g. Dumont 2015; Woermann 2012) and the widespread usage of digital technologies (e.g. Dumont 2017a; Thorpe 2017a) have been realtering the flows of resources, knowledge, products and people for many years.

Over the past two decades, the literature on the lived experiences of recreational action sport participants has been growing steadily. However, the experiences of action sport professionals – athletes, coaches, agents, managers, administrators, journalists, photographers and other media producers – have garnered much less consideration. Our knowledge about the implications of the aforementioned transformations on the professionalization of action sport members and the labour dynamics at stake, remains scarce. For instance, we know very little about the working lives of athletes, the transformation of media in times of digitalization, or the growth of coaches and agents as professionals. These transformations are embedded in larger sociocultural–political–economic processes, and thus developing our critical understandings of the changing working lives of action sport professionals has the potential to provide valuable new insights into these phenomena. As we will see in this introduction and in the volume, paying attention to the professionalization of action sports requires closer consideration of the changing relations of power within and across the action sport/media/economy/organizational complex in local, national and global contexts. In so doing, however, we might better acknowledge and analyse the ever growing significance of social media for athletes and action sports members, the opportunities and challenges offered for work and labour in the new economy, different strategies for personal branding and capital accumulation, the changing roles and responsibilities of action sports organizations in national and international contexts, the impacts of changes in technologies, equipment and facilities, and the influential role of transnational corporations on the lives of action sport participants and the cultures more broadly.

This volume presents six original articles that bring these changes to the fore by exploring how different action sport national and international organizations, and athletes and members, are responding to this changing landscape. In the remainder of this introduction, we sketch some of the main transformations at stake in the field, particularly the rise of the action sport professionals (i.e. athletes, coaches, agents), and the embeddedness of these dynamics in major work and labour transformations (i.e. emotional and relational labour). To do so, we draw upon our respective work and a selection of the recent literature in the field. Finally, we locate the six original papers within these themes.

The rise of the action sport professionals: athletes, coaches and agents

Over the past two decades, action sport researchers have increasingly accessed the voices of core, recreational and marginal participants, yet the lived experiences of elite action sport athletes, and other professionals such as coaches and agents, have remained largely out of reach. An early exception was Rinehart’s (2003) work with famous aggressive inline skater Arlo Eisenberg. As action sports have continued to grow, however, the athletes in the spotlight have seemed to move even further out of reach. Some researchers have relied upon magazines, books, films and social media to help understand the important roles of action sport athletes as cultural influencers, but few have focused their research on seeking out the perspectives and opinions of action sport athletes themselves. Not dissimilar from more traditional sports, accessing the elite performers is difficult – athletes are not only busy, but often protected by various levels of gatekeepers built into the sporting infrastructure. Those action sport researchers who have sought out such voices have tended to draw upon cultural and social capital. For example, Snyder’s (2012, 2017) access to professional skateboarding in the United States was strongly embedded in familial ties; Thorpe’s (2011) research on professional snowboarding built upon her years as athlete and instructor in New Zealand and the United States; and Dumont′s (2016c) work with professional climbers was initiated through friendships developed during years of climbing through Europe and the USA. In this section, we briefly consider some of the changes occurring in the careers of action sport athletes, coaches and agents. In sketching some of these trends we hope to enthuse others to pursue new lines of research on this quickly evolving topic.

The risks and rewards for action sport athletes: ‘we ride until we crash’

As action sports have became popularized and incorporated into the mainstream, they have inevitably adopted many of the trappings of traditional modern sports: corporate sponsorship, large prize monies, rationalized systems of rules, hierarchical and individualistic star systems, win-at-all costs values and the creation of heroes and heroines (Thorpe 2009). Unlike earlier generations, many current action sport athletes embrace commercial approaches. Professional skateboarders (e.g. Mark Appleyard, Ryan Sheckler), surfers (e.g. Kelly Slater, Stephanie Gilmore), snowboarders (e.g. Shaun White, Hannah Tetter), climbers (e.g. Chris Sharma, David Lama), BMX riders (e.g. Mat Hoffman) and other action sport athletes have benefited from the increasing commercialized forms of their activities. Some have achieved superstar status within and beyond the culture of their specific sports, attracting corporate sponsors including Apple, Target, Visa, Nike, Mountain Dew, Campbell’s Soup and Boost Mobile, and earning multi-million dollar salaries from their sponsorship deals combined with competition earnings.

Such support, however, is not equitably distributed across the most talented athletes and resources have been more accessible to young, white male athletes, and those women who gain the most media coverage and corporate support tend to be those who embody and conform to a traditional heteronormative femininity. For example, world-champion surfer and self-proclaimed ‘surf feminist’ Cori Schumacher (2017) has described the challenges for women in competitive surfing and in a homophobic, sexist surfing industry. Similarly, lisahunter (2016) and Thorpe, Toffoletti, and Bruce (2017) have revealed the politics of who is made visible in surfing media and who remains invisible, and the strategies of different women to negotiate coverage in (mass and social) media and access to cultural and industry resources (i.e. corporate sponsorships). To date, few have considered how action sport athletes of different ethnicities, races, sexualities negotiate space and resources in their sporting cultures and industries. However, while research is underway to explore such issues in relation to the opportunities, struggles and strategies of minorities, further work is needed as action sports continue to appeal to more diverse groups around the world.

It would also be a mistake to assume that corporate- and national-level sponsorships and support flows evenly across different action sports and countries. Indeed, athletes from countries with less money to invest in new high-performance sport will continue to struggle to generate enough incomes to pursue their careers (Wheaton and Thorpe 2016). Whereas, some countries (e.g. Australia, see Ellmer and Rynne, this volume) are investing strongly in their current and future Olympic athletes with facilities and support staff, in other countries athletes receive very little support from their national federations. Furthermore, in some action sports such as sport climbing, corporate sponsorships and prize money are very low in comparison to other lifestyle sports, and thus future Olympic athletes continue to struggle with how to finance their travel, living and training expenses (Dumont 2017a).

Some researchers have considered the growing pressures facing action sport athletes as their activities become increasingly commodified. For example, in her critical analysis of the role of transnational corporate sponsors (such as Red Bull) to action sport athletes, Thorpe (2014) reminds us that ‘athletes are in a labour relationship in which they are (often freely) producing media assets for Red Bull who then proceed to make money from both the media products and… sales of energy drinks’ (66). While acknowledging that action sport athletes are ‘not necessarily duped by the power of transnational corporations, events and media’, she continues to offer caution as ‘not all action sport athletes survive Red Bull sponsored events’ (66). Using the example of the death of a world-renowned American extreme skier and B.A.S.E jumper during a Red Bull stunt, she argues ‘although such cases are rare, they raise important questions regarding action sport athletes’ agency and rights in this new context of mega corporations, transnational media and ever more extreme sporting spectacles’ (67). Some action sport athletes have expressed concerns about the rising expectations from corporate sponsors to constantly push the boundaries of what is possible on a pair of skis, a skateboard, snowboard, surfboard or climbing wall. Recent deaths (e.g. Hawaiian big-wave surfer Mark Foo, Canadian freestyle skier Sarah Burke, US freestyle motocross (FMX) rider Jeremy Lusk), and the life-threatening/changing injuries of athletes such as top US snowboarder Kevin Pearce (see The Crash Reel documentary) and US BMX rider Dave Mirra, have prompted many to (at least momentarily) critically consider the glorification of risk and the celebration of progression that remain at the core of their sporting cultures, but that are also strongly endorsed and (financially) encouraged by corporate sponsors. For example, following Mirra’s suicide in 2016, a postmortum diagnosed him as the first action sport athlete with chronic traumatic encephalopathy (a neurodegenerative disease resulting from multiple concussions that can lead to dementia, memory loss and depression) (Roenigk 2016). This diagnosis raised concerns across the action sports communities about the long-term consequences of the ‘go hard or go home’ mentality that underpins so much progression in these sporting cultures. In an interview in RollingStone magazine following Mirra’s diagnosis, fellow BMX legend Mat Hofman reflected critically on his own concussion rate (>100), before explaining: ‘we ride until we crash. That’s just the nature of the sport’ (Hyde 2016). Before his death, Mirra himself had commented on the overzealous drive in the contemporary riders seeking the glory and big prizes: ‘I could see it in their eyes, man, they’ll do whatever it takes to win. They’ll die. Just like I would when I was younger. I would have died to win’ (cited in Hyde 2016).

With major corporate sponsors increasingly offering large prize monies, some athletes have also complained that the focus of many action sport competitions is no longer fun. Extreme forms of individualism and egocentricity are increasingly prevalent. US Olympic silver medalist snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler, believes the ‘industry pressure’ and ‘ultra-high’ level of snowboarding abilities are creating an ‘extremely competitive’ atmosphere and decries a younger generation who, in their hunger to win, are ‘changing the overall feel at the top of the half-pipe’ (cited in Sherowski 2003, 146). As signalled by both Mirra and Bleiler above, many contemporary young ‘up-and-comers’ participate in different ways to action sport participants from the past, and many are increasingly training under the guidance of coaches in highly organized structures in which their sports offer the possibility of earning a highly profitable career.

Yet it is important to note that not all athletes follow a competitive career path. As Ojala (2014) and Snyder (2012) have explained in snowboarding and skateboarding, respectively, many action sport athletes pursue alternative career paths via media-based performances. As we explain below, the rise of social media has also enabled those pursuing media-based careers (as athletes, but also as photographers, writers, filmmakers, etc) an important new forum to share their skills with their transnational communities, and to build audiences via social media platforms such as Youtube, Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat, and thus gain and maintain sponsors based on their digital performances and success at connecting with hard-to-reach consumer groups (Dumont 2017a; Thorpe 2014; 2017a). A good example of action sport athletes following a social media-based career is Storror, a UK-based professional parkour team, who occassionally compete, but spend most of their time travelling the world self-producing short films (e.g. Roof Culture Asia) and posting images and ‘stories’ on Instagram, such that they have over 335,000 followers. They have created their own line of clothing that they market and sell via their social media accounts, and have attracted various corporate investors and advertisers who recognize the cultural and economic capital of their digital reach.

The alternative career strategies married with the entrepreneurial, self-branding and marketing approaches being employed by some freestyle surfers (Evers, this volume), street skaters (Snyder 2012), freestyle snowboarders (Ojala 2014), climbers (Dumont 2018), parkour participants (Gilchrist and Wheaton 2013), and their large international followings, suggest that there remains a critical, highly creative value system evident at the core of action sport cultures and industries. Dumont (2018), for instance, has argued that, to make value as an athlete, many professional rock climbers primarily build upon creative and symbol-making activities with the aim of making enough money to fund their lifestyle. Indeed, drawing parallels with the creative professions, he shows that their work is inextricably intertwined with the achievement of highly creative activities and anchored in a complex system of communication aiming for the production and dissemination of experiences through media production.

The action sport coach: from cultural contradiction to status position

Many early action sport athletes embraced a do-it-yourself approach to learning the activities, and typically rejected the role of coaches that were deemed too disciplinarian and counter to the alternative cultural ethos of the activities (Ojala and Thorpe 2015). The use of ‘coaches’ was considered antithetical to the counter-cultural philosophies of many early action sport cultures. But, as action sports have become increasingly institutionalized and competitive, some individuals and groups sought out professionals from within their sporting cultures to better their chances of success. To develop the strength and flexibility necessary for highly competitive performances, and to minimize the potential for injury, athletes are increasingly working with coaches, personal trainers and sport scientists, and engaging in highly structured and disciplined training regimes, as the following quote from a surf agent suggests:

Surfing was originally a by-product of the counterculture… many of the early surfers were burnouts… they were drug addicts… they were eccentrics and they were the loafers in life. Today, surfing has become not only big dollars but it’s considered a sport. You have the Hurley, Nike, train train train, work out, don’t drink, don’t smoke, vegan, do push ups when you’re not doing anything, sort of lifestyle. It’s no longer the guys going on tour just getting drunk and getting high and sleeping with girls, which is what it was in the 80s and a lot of the 90s (Personal communications with action sport agent, 2016).

In addition, national Olympic committees and sporting bodies are increasingly investing in the development of their action sports talent by hiring highly skilled coaches, many of whom are ex-professional action sport athletes with expertise in both coaching theory and practice. Some action sport coaches are increasingly acknowledged for their skills. For example, in 2012, the US Olympic Committee named US Snowboarding Halfpipe Team Coach Rick Bower ‘2011 Olympic Coach of the Year’, making him the third US Snowboarding Halfpipe coach to receive the award since 2002. According to Bill Marolt, President of the USOC’s National Coaches Conference:

Rick Bower is a great example of how a coach’s leadership applied to athletes can be a major difference maker in athletic success. Rick’s vision along with his ability to create a team environment, apply technical knowledge and to communicate has led to success not only from athletes like Olympic champion Kelly Clark but from an entire team (cited in Ojala and Thorpe 2015).

While Olympic snowboarders are working closely with national team coaches in highly disciplined and organized training environments, it is important to note that the snowboarding industry also supports a variety of other approaches to professional snowboarding, many of which are less formalized with very different coach–athlete relationships often based on friendships and peer-mentoring rather than top-down models of knowledge dissemination (Ojala and Thorpe 2015).

Coaching is a more common practice in some action sports (e.g. snowboarding, surfing, BMX racing) than others. In skateboarding, for instance, coaching has long been considered a ‘taboo’ subject, as one skateboarding journalist writes:

For many of us the idea of skateboarding as a competitive or team sport has long been a point of contention. And because the word ‘coach’ automatically conjures up images of sweaty old jocks with whistles and exercise drills, it’s sometimes not a very respected profession in the skateboarding world (Nieratko 2014, para. 2).

However, there are more and more opportunities for coaches to work with elite and emerging competitive skaters. Sean Hayes was widely recognized as the ‘world’s first skate coach’ when he was hired by professional skater Ryan Sheckler in 2010 to help him make a comeback at the X Games after being injured the previous year. But as the following comment reveals, Hayes faced some criticism from the skateboarding community and had to defend his position as a coach:

I mean, I get it, a coach? In skateboarding? But let me clarify: The guys I work with are already the best in the world; I’m not teaching them how to do kickflips. What I do is help them perform with the skills they have in the times when it really counts. For most of these guys that’s at big contests like the X-Games or Street League. Not only are they skating in front of a huge crowd and on national television, but they can win upwards of $100,000 for first place. So if some skaters see it as disgusting and vile to want to do your best, then so be it, but the truth is, standing on top of the podium feels great. Skating harder than everyone else is pretty fucking awesome if you ask me (cited in Nieratko 2014, para. 7).

With greater understanding of the pressures facing competitive action sport athletes today, cultural attitudes seem to be shifting. As the previously cited skate journalist concedes: ‘Truth be told, every other sport has them, and if skating is actually headed to the Olympics these guys are going to need coaches, and I’d rather it be guys who used to rip like Sean Hayes than some armchair skate dad who doesn’t know his ass from his axle’. Despite a rise in the use of coaches in action sports, Ojala and Thorpe (2015) suggest that positive action sport athlete–coach relationships tend to differ from more traditional, hierarchical coach–athlete relationships, particularly in the value action sport athletes place on coaches with high levels of past experience as athletes themselves, and their understanding of and respect for the unique cultural dynamics and value systems within action sport cultures.

Today, coaches are no longer just for elite action sport athletes. Many parents are seeking out coaches and training camps (e.g. Camp Woodward, Windells) for their children who are entering action sports competitions, and pursuing careers as action sport athletes, from ever younger ages. Commenting on this trend in skateboarding, a US action sports agent proclaimed, ‘There are so many kids nowadays that train and go out and they skate three, four, five, six hours a day and they are true athletes’ (Personal communication with action sport agent, 2016). Indeed, the internet is filled with widely shared videos of very young, incredibly talented action sports athletes who are travelling the world redefining what was thought possible on a skateboard, in the waves or on rocks. For instance, climber Ashima Shiraishi (born 2001) has been pushing the limits of the sport, climbing a V14 boulder when she was just 13 years old. At the time of writing this introduction, another child phenom, Oriane Bertone, set a new standard by climbing a boulder of similar difficulty at the age of 12. Athen Camacho, a 3-year-old Californian skateboarder, recently became the youngest sponsored skateboarder in the world when he started receiving ‘flow’ of clothing and equipment after his father set up an Instagram account and began posting photos and videos of him skating (Valentini 2016). Similarly, Japanese child skateboarding phenoms Sky (9 years) and her brother Ocean (6 years) share an Instagram account (managed by their mother) with 10 thousand followers, and regularly feature in Youtube videos with up to a million views. Importantly, social media is playing an important role in raising the awareness of very young action sports participants and corporate awareness of their talent. While sponsors are typically unwilling to pay action sport athletes until their early teens, they are increasingly providing product (clothing and equipment) to very young children with large social media followings ‘in exchange for social media tags, shares, and shout-outs’ (Valentini 2016).

Such processes are clearly speeding up relationships between corporate sponsors and young action sport athletes, such that by the time these athletes reach their early and mid-teens some are deeply entrenched in the action sports economy. According to an action sport agent, ‘the proliferation of things like X Games and Dew Tour’ (and we would add the internet) has led to new financial opportunities for very young athletes: ‘You have 15, 16, 17 year old kids buying their first homes, they have more expensive cars than I do, they make more money in a year than I made probably the first 15 years of my professional life combined’. However, in tandem with such opportunities have come increased pressures from parents seeking to live vicariously through their children. According to one skateboarding father, ‘I’ve seen parents pushing their kids. Those skate dads, they’re yelling at their kids, “Get up there and get that! If you want to get that sponsor you better do this!”’ (cited in Valentini 2016). This is not to say that the opportunities are the same across action sports. Indeed, their respective economies present some sharp differences as outlined by Dumont (2017a) in a comparison between climbing and surfing competitions prize money. Yet, with the inclusion of more action sports into the Olympics such pressures are sure to continue regardless of differences in economic earnings, and thus we suggest that the role of coaches, parents, agents and sports organizations in the development of (young) action sport athletes is a topic worthy of more academic consideration.

The debated role of action sport agents: ‘oh no, you don’t want to sign up with that guy’

Another professional endeavour that has continued to grow alongside new opportunities for action sport athletes is the action sports agent. Not dissimilar from action sport coaches, there has been some backlash to such positions both from within the sporting cultures and from the corporate world who preferred to deal with action sport athletes without the negotiating experience of an agent. According to a surf and skate agent:

The truth is [that] this industry is run by suits, and it’s run by guys that answer to shareholders. But the second I go to sign a client, all their sponsors go ‘oh no you don’t want to sign up with that guy, he’s just going to take from you’. And what it is is the whole blocking so that they can get as much out of these kids as possible, wear them out as much as possible for as little as possible. That’s their job. But my job is to ensure that my clients aren’t taken advantage of (personal communications, 2016).

Some action sport agents have transitioned from the action sports industry, whereas others are less familiar with the action sport cultures but with more experience working for celebrities and/or athletes from more traditional sports. Some of the former are explicitly aware of the contradictions in their role, and sometimes struggle to negotiate their position between the action sports culture and the corporate world. Yet for both groups there is a tendency to justify their jobs as ‘protecting’ their athletes and making sure they are paid their worth:

When Apple calls and they want one of my skate clients in a commercial and all they have to do is skateboard, they get paid to do what they’re going to do anyway, you’re letting a big company use your image and you’re getting paid a lot of money. They’re making more than the average income of most Americans in one weekend. So for me to shrug my shoulders at that, no! You have it in football, you have it in baseball, you have it in soccer, you have it in tennis, you have kids coming up and they have management or agents, and it’s the norm. Whereas in action sports, I’ve gotten such a push back from these major corporate guys... but they’re doing the same thing that the Olympics, and ESPN and Mountain Dew and NBC are doing which is exploiting our culture. And is that bad? Yes and no (personal communications, 2016).

In some actions sports, athletes have developed very close relationships with their sponsors, for instance. So, while agents might advocate on the behalf of their athletes, helping them focus on the athletic dimension of their work and securing new opportunities, they can be seen as intruders by the companies, as highlighted by Dumont in the context of professional climbing (2016c). Despite some tensions between companies and agents, as action sports are increasingly professionalized so their role continues to grow which has multiple implications on the everyday work and life of athletes, particularly in their relationships with companies, media and institutions, thus offering an area where more research is needed.

The work of action sport athletes: From exploitation to entrepreneurialism 

The action sports industry comprises many jobs filled with people motivated primarily to stay connected to the lifestyle that they love, including instructors, journalists, photographers, competition judges, company owners and workers, coaches, agents, event organizers, organizational staff, managers and leaders. Here we focus on the top tier of the action sport industry job market, the potentially financially lucrative labour of professional action sport athletes. In many action sports, manufacturers and retailers hire riders/athletes on the basis of their physical skills, personality and attitude that reflect positively on the company. According to one industry insider:

It’s just marketing, marketing, marketing…stuffing these kid’s minds with ‘coolness.’ It’s really big business; if you do it right you can really go far. It all depends on who your sponsors are and how good you are at talking, because even a mediocre snowboarder can go far if they know how the industry works, on the flipside the best snowboarder ever can get absolutely nothing because he or she doesn’t market themselves right (cited in Thorpe 2011, 46).

Yet the notion that being a professional surfer, snowboarder, skater or climber is the ‘dream job’ pervades the action sports culture. Among Tina Basich’s responsibilities as one of the first sponsored female snowboarders in the late 1980s, she had ‘to wear [her] sponsors’ clothing and gear whenever I was snowboarding’ and she had ‘to compete in snowboarding competitions and be in photo shoots for media exposure in the new magazines.’ Not surprisingly, she ‘wasn’t giving this up for anything’ (Basich and Gasperini 2003, 65).

While professionalism bestows travel, lifestyle, status and prestige, one can also discern elements of exploitation in the relationship between manufacturers and athletes. In her Marxist analysis of professional snowboarding, Thorpe (2011) explained that growth in real value rests on the exploitation of productive labour. She was not arguing that professional action sport athletes confront gross exploitation (and few athletes would make such claims!). On the contrary, some earn six-figure salaries, and a few event garner multi-million dollar incomes for their athletic pursuits and corporate connections. But as critical scholars, those amounts have to be contextualized by the relationships between what these athletes receive and what they create (Harvey 1989). As workers who rely solely upon their labour-power, professional action sport athletes are vulnerable to the processes associated with capitalist accumulation. Notwithstanding the essential roles of the professional, early pro-snowboarder Tom Burt remarks that they are ‘the first…to hit the floor when companies fall… [they’re] just a marketing tool’ (cited in Baccigaluppi, Mayugba, and Carnel 2001, 97). Todd Richards (2003) summed up the plight of the sponsored snowboarder during the economic crisis of the late 1990s: ‘…for the average pro snowboarder trying to make a living, it meant, “Damn, my royalty check sucks this month.” Or worse, “What do you mean, you’re restructuring the team? Oh, I get it. I’m fired”’ (217). This has been seen across action sports at times of economic downturn. For example, in response to industry challenges, in 2013 global surf giant Quiksilver shut down a number of its sister brands (i.e. VSTR, Quiksilver Women, Quiksilver Girls), redirected some of its other companies (i.e. DC) and cut 30 staff members and numerous team members. Balaram Stack, a 21-year-old US surfer who had been riding for Quiksilver since he was 14 years old, was on the long list of surfers, skateboarders, snowboarders and BMX riders to lose their Quiksilver-related sponsorship deals (Struck 2013). From a Marxist perspective, the increasingly competitive nature of the action sports market leads capitalists (read owners of companies both internal and external to the cultures) to extort maximum surplus value from their workers, and professional athletes are under intense pressure to perform (produce).

Of course, this is nothing new, across sports and disciplines, athletes face much uncertainty about their athletic results and contracts, and have to constantly manage their body, mind and relationships with teammates, coaches and sponsors, and keep up with the latest scientific and technological developments, in order to keep performing at the highest level while generating revenue. As Rigauer (1981[1969]) wrote almost half a century ago, in a capitalist society, professional sport is often reduced to work. Professional sport assumes the same relations as the workplace: ‘The athlete is the producer, the spectators the consumers’ (Rigauer 1981; [1969], 68–69). Like the worker, sport dehumanizes the professional sportsperson. Rigauer (1981[1969]) claims that the athlete is alienated at the point at which sporting performances are transformed into a commodity. As professionals, ‘athletes forfeit control over their labor power, and are forced to maximize productivity’ (Giulianotti 2005, 32; also see Beamish 2002). Simply put, market-structured sport restricts the expressive and creative potential of the athletes themselves (Thorpe 2011). However, in the new economy and particularly with the rise of social media and new digital technologies, there are new opportunities for athletes to demonstrate their agency and autonomy, as well as different sets of pressures and expectations.

The coexistence of competitions with the non competitive (at least under traditional standards) outdoor dimension shared by action sports, together with the recent democratization of digital media technologies, has contributed to reshaping the features and modes of production in action sport labour markets. Indeed, as much of the research mentioned above has demonstrated, action sports at large are intimately intertwined in media production and circulation, the latter contributing to creating, shaping and disseminating particular versions of the ‘action sports lifestyle’, thus fuelling the aspirations of participants as well companies marketing and branding strategies (Ponting 2009). Athletes, as cultural products, have always represented a sort of brand ambassador since the development of sponsorship relationships (Jackson, Andrews, and Scherer 2005), and this is also the case in action sports.

However, it has been argued that in the context of web 2.0 athletes are now facing new challenges with sponsors expecting them to engage in regular self- and brand-promotion on social media, and to craft an online identity that will build a large international following (see Dumont 2018; Pegararo and Jinnah 2012; Toffoletti and Thorpe 2018). For many action sport companies, the rise of social media has meant major changes in their marketing strategies, which has direct implications for their relationships and support of action sport athletes. As the owner and co-founder of a skateboarding company explains, ‘In the world of skate, social media has changed things drastically in the last five years. The ability to have a marketing program based off of free social media uses has changed our game 100 percent’ (cited in Valentini 2016). It is important to consider the implications of these transformations for action sports, and how recent changes undertaken by work in multiple sectors of the new economy, are impacting the working lives of action sport professionals, and particularly athletes.

For instance, sponsorship is traditionally approached as a strategic communication medium involving an exchange between the sponsor and the sponsored entity (Quester and Bal 2013), and primarily studied from a sponsor perspective (Charambous-Papamiltiades 2013; Dumont 2016c). Little is known, however, about how athletes experience these relationships. With athletes being ‘used’ to build relationships between the brand and the products of companies, and to contribute in developing relationships between the companies, brands and consumers, they are playing an important role in producing what has been coined as ‘relational labour’ (e.g. Baym 2015; Mears 2015). Indeed, part of the job is to generate and foster interactions with fans-as-followers through the deployment of multiple strategies, a process in which social media technologies play a central role. Indeed, companies increasingly include social media use as a condition of sponsorship contracts, where the amount of the latter can be leveraged by the amount of followers (Dumont 2017a). In this context, action sport researchers are increasingly acknowledging the important role of social media in action sport cultures and industries and the radical changes in athletes’ social media use as a form of prosumption (Woermann 2013), for self-branding and generating and engaging with their ‘communities’ of followers (Gilchrist and Wheaton 2013; Olive 2015; Thorpe 2017a). Yet few have explored the power relationships involved in such processes, or how the sponsor–athlete–agent relationship informs the social media strategies being employed by action sport athletes. An important exception is the work of Dumont (2017a, 2017b, 2018) on professional climbers use of social media, and Evers paper in this volume on professional male surfers engagement with social media.

While action sport athletes are increasing engaging in different dimensions of digital media work, many are involved in a form of multi-activities (e.g. Coulson 2012; Demazière and Gadea 2009), engaging in a range of work activities across sectors to provide them with different forms of income. Consider, for instance, a professional free-skier sponsored by different companies, working seasonally as a ski instructor and bartender, in addition of writing articles for magazines based on her travels, all the while posting short videos of her skiing on YouTube, photos on Instagram, and updating her profile on Facebook (Thorpe 2014, 2016). In addition to managing athletic skills, working as an ambassador for companies implies producing media, being able to act and speak in public, developing relationships with fans, participating in product design and teaching clinics and seminars, along with many other activities. The sum of these later practices converges into a multi-layered mode of labour involvinghighly versatile skills (Dumont 2016a).

As both Dumont (2016b) and Evers (this volume) suggest, there is an emotional commitment embedded in athletes multiple uses of digital technologies, and their relationships with fans and sponsors. Drawing upon Hochschild’s (1983) concept of ‘emotional labour’, they explore the affective and emotional processes involved in the relational work of creating and developing interactions with social media followers. On the one hand, Dumont describes the emotional dimension involved in creating relationships with fans. Importantly, he shows that this relational labour is not exclusively an individual endeavour but involves a strong collective dimension. Adopting a different engagment with the concept of emotional labour, Evers offers a gendered analysis of professional male surfers digital work in relation to concepts of masculinity in surfing culture. Others are beginning to explore how such digital technologies are also affecting the everyday experiences and relationships among recreational action sport participants in gendered, political, and affective ways (MacKay 2017; Olive 2015).

The business context of sponsorship may mean that impression management strategies in online spaces become an imperative for athletes – with different strategies available to men and women.  For instance, Thorpe, Toffoletti and Bruce (2017) offer a three-pronged feminist analysis of professional Hawaiian surfer and model Alana Blanchard’s social media usage to reveal the different strategies available to female action sport athletes, with some embracing neoliberal, entrepreneurial, self-branding approaches via self-sexualizing strategies and others opting instead to focus primarily on promoting their skills, lifestyle and achievement without resorting to self-subjectification (also see Thorpe 2017b; Toffoletti and Thorpe 2018). As Toffoletti and Thorpe (2018) explain elsewhere, it is also important to consider how such images are being consumed and responded to by the large international followings of such athletes.

As mentioned above, the emotional labour involved in using social media to generate relationships with fans, and the necessary working relationships with companies, agents and media producers, can add new challenges for athletes. For instance, the penetration of social media into many aspects of the everyday life, and the blurring between private and public, can pose challenges to athletes’ lifestyles and reputations (Dumont, 2017b). For example, US snowboarder Scotty Lago got in a lot of trouble when a photo taken at a post-event party following the 2010 Winter Olympic Snowboarding Halfpipe Finals went viral. The photo showed Lago posing with a female fan in which she is kissing his bronze medal held suggestively below his waist. Despite a PR and social media training programme with the US Olympic team prior to departure, this incident saw Lago offer a public apology for his behaviour and an immediate return to the USA. Interestingly, while the general public and mass media criticized Lago’s actions as unprofessional and decidedly un-Olympic, many core snowboarders celebrated his behaviour as evidence of the sport’s continued connection with its counter-cultural and anti-authoritarian roots. The key point here is that social media use by action sport athletes (and their appearance in others social media) requires an understanding of the value systems of their core followers, as well as a sensitivity and awareness that those outside the culture may view such images and posts in very different ways which could (in some cases) compromise relationships with sponsors.

In the production of different kinds of social media content (i.e. YouTube videos, Instagram photos and stories, a website and/or Facebook page), athletes are not only fulfilling some of their sponsorship contractual agreement, but also producing ‘reputational labor’ (Dumont, 2017b). Indeed, they engage in digital work to help build their reputation and personal-brand in order to gain value for sponsors. Some, however, are recognizing the value in their content and self-brand, and thus taking ownership of (and thus personally profiting from) their digital work. For example, the French snowboarder Xavier de La Rue and the American rock climber Paul Robinson have both launched their own media production companies, thus selling content directly to sponsors. The traditional sponsorship relationships where athletes lend their image to product is, therefore, also undertaking changes. Moreover, in tandem with athlete auto-production, the rise of user-generated content (Woermann 2012) and its recuperation for commercial purposes by specialized media has driven significant transformations in the work of media professionals and the action sports media industry as a whole (Dumont 2015).

There is a growing awareness in some action sports of the implications of the professionalization processes and the labour challenges for athletes in this new (digital) economy. For example, Brad Bricknell (2017), a former professional surfer, writes:

Surfing is certainly moving deeper and deeper into the professional arena as far as sports go. Globally recognizable surfers like Kelly Slater and Mick Fanning, along with the WSL changing its gears on reach, have all contributed to the sport’s elevation. That’s generally a good thing, but [with] things like social media and professional coaching, there are heavier expectations being placed on the surfers we watch. … Could it be time for professional surfing to consider athlete welfare and development officers, similar to those that has been employed by the National Football League in the USA and AFL and NRL in Australia? The pressures are largely the same in these mainstream sports as in surfing, and I’d argue, so is the need.

As this quote suggests, as action sports become increasingly professionalized, the support structures surrounding the athletes require more careful consideration. In this context, more research is needed that examines the emerging and evolving forms of work in the action sports industry (not just for athletes, but also media producers, agents or coaches, for instance), and how such changes are being affected/affecting the rising use of digital media.

Overview of the volume

This volume features six original articles from emerging and established authors from Australia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Russia and the United Kingdom. The first two papers explore the changing organizational structures in action sports via the cases of snowboarding and climbing. Our first paper by Anna-Maria Strittmatter, Boris Kilvinger, Annika Bodemar, Eivind Skille and Markus Kurscheidt begins by providing an overview of existing literature on organizational politics in snowboarding. Identifying an important gap in this literature, they proceed to describe how international freestyle snowboarding organizations are forming new relationships in a changing industry and marketplace. Following this, Mikhail Batuev and Leigh Robinson investigate the organizational changes that have occurred in sport climbing as a result of Olympic inclusion. He argues that the value and structure of climbing has evolved in order to fit with the regulatory legitimacy required by incorporation into the Olympic framework. The next two papers hone in on the experiences of action sport athletes in the sports of surfing and kitesurfing. In his research on the digital media work of professional freestyle male surfers, Clifton Evers shows that emotional labour (traditionally associated with women’s work) is also strongly at stake in men’s social media practices. Then in one of the first academic articles on kitesurfing, Froukje Smits problematizes the action sport ideal of freedom in her examination the experiences of young male Dutch commercially sponsored kite surfers. The final two papers focus on processes of institutionalization and professionalization in two national contexts, New Zealand and Australia. Focusing on the development of parkour in New Zealand, Damien Puddle, Belinda Wheaton and Holly Thorpe explore how processes of glocalization have influenced the development of parkour in this country, and reveal some of the unique strategies and decisions made by the activities national organizing body, Parkour New Zealand, as it seeks to grow and expand in ethical and conscious ways. In the final paper, Eva Ellmer and Steven Rynne provide an overview of the professionalization of action sports in Australia, including coaching, resourcing and facilities for athletes as they prepare for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and beyond.

Together, these six papers signal some of the important work being done on various dimensions of the professionalization of action sports in different countries and sporting contexts. In so doing, these papers reveal how different sports, and different countries, are at various stages in the professionalization process, and the local, national and international responses and reactions to such trends differ considerably. However, much work is still needed and we hope this volume serves as an invitation, an opening and/or a provocation for others to engage in this discussion and pursue further research on this complex and quickly evolving topic.

In sum, we would like to take this opportunity to thank our authors for their contributions to this volume. We are thrilled to feature the work of emerging and established action sport scholars from around the world, and it has been a pleasure working with each of them over the past year or so. We are also very grateful to all of the reviewers who supported this volume with their generous and constructive feedback of the manuscripts. Finally, thanks to Boria Majumdar and John Hughson for encouraging the volume from the beginning and supporting it through to completion.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.