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April 4, 2023

U.S. Ski & Snowboard Evolves Strategy, Grows Revenues 20% YoY to $46 Million Plus

U.S. Ski & Snowboard had a memorable 2022-2023 season on the snow.

The team won five Nation Cups, U.S. athletes combined to win 15 World Championship medals and four U.S. athletes won a collective six FIS Crystal Globes (awarded to the best athlete of the season in each sport).

But the National Governing Body, or NGB, built some meaningful momentum off it too. U.S. Ski & Snowboard will report taking in more than $46 million in revenue when its fiscal year ends on May 1, a ~20% increase over last year.

“We signed some meaningful new [commercial] partnerships over the last 12 months [and] improved our [media] broadcast distribution,” Sophie Goldschmidt (president and CEO, U.S. Ski and Snowboard) said.

With a slew of young stars (including Mikaela Shiffrin, Jessie Diggins, Chloe Kim, and Alex Hall), a new approach to marketing those athletes and their sports, and Salt Lake City expected to land the ’30 or ’34 Winter Olympics, there are reasons to believe the growth will continue.

“Momentum is building, underlined by the fact that we’ve been the best team in the world in so many disciplines this year,” Goldschmidt said. “Given our evolved strategy and greater focus on development, we’re only getting started.”

Goldschmidt was hired in November of 2021 to help U.S. Ski & Snowboard evolve from a strategy standpoint and to usher in transformation within select areas of the business. 

“We needed to grow the visibility of our athletes and the promotion of our sports,” Goldschmidt said. The expectation is doing so would drive participation, fan interest and new commercial partnerships. 

Goldschmidt implemented a revamped approach to storytelling and the way U.S. Ski & Snowboard packages and distributes its content. 

“We needed some innovation and creativity in messaging, and [in] how we [brought our] stories to life,” she said.

U.S. Ski & Snowboard's chief executive also felt it was important for the team to host more live events. 

“Broadcasters can get behind [domestic competitions] because they are taking place in the right time zone, partners can activate around [them] and [the] athletes can enjoy a home-field advantage,” Goldschmidt said. 

So, the NGB doubled the number of Alpine World Cup events held stateside this season (4) and the plan is to increase the count further in ’23-‘24.

Minneapolis will also host the first domestic cross country World Cup event in more than 20 years next season, and there will be an additional freestyle moguls World Cup event in the U.S. too.

U.S. Ski & Snowboard includes concerts and other interactive fan touchpoints (think: autograph signings, athlete panels) alongside the athletic competition at these events to give them a festival feel. Nearly 40,000 fans attended the Stifel Killington Cup over two days last November.

The more athletes U.S. Ski & Snowboard can get on the snow, the more talent the NGB will ultimately have to choose from.

“Creating awareness drives [long-term] performance,” Goldschmidt said.

For reference purposes, the number of active skiers and snowboarders in the U.S. (~20 million) is on par with tennis players (~23 million) and golfers (~25 million). 

Growth in the number of fans engaging with U.S. Ski & Snowboard content should result in increased revenues. 

“The bigger your sport is, the more attention you’re getting, the more success you’re having, will lead to more commercial interest,” Goldschmidt said.

And for a non-profit organization, additional revenue is more money that can be invested back into the athletes, programming and overall mission; including the strategic pillar of hosting more domestic events.

“Our goal is for events is to be break-even within two to three years and over time they generate revenue,” Goldschmidt said. 

The U.S. Ski & Snowboard Foundation Board of Trustees will offset the shortfall in the interim. Roughly half of the money U.S. Ski & Snowboard takes in this year will come from donors and philanthropic investments made into the organization. 

U.S. Ski & Snowboard grew its top line by $5 million in ’22-’23 after several years of flat or declining revenues. The increase largely comes from growth within the sponsorship and broadcast categories. 

“We’ve got some new partners on board, most notably Stifel [Financial] as our title partner for all of the ski teams under the U.S. Ski & Snowboard brand. We also signed a new deal with Kappa [as the team’s technical apparel partner],” Goldschmidt said.

The Stifel deal, a four-year pact, is among the most expansive tie-ups ever executed by the organization. It also includes title sponsorship of three domestic Alpine World Cup events and a host of developmental NorAm Cup events. 

“It’s a holistic partnership and they’re making a [eight-figure] commitment,” Goldschmidt said. 

And just last week, the organization announced another "transformative" partnership. United Airlines was named the Official Airlines Partner of U.S. Ski & Snowboard through 2027.

The NGB managed to increase domestic media rights revenues in ’22-’23 too. 

“We signed a groundbreaking [broadcast] deal with Outside [Interactive], which includes an OTT platform, a FAST channel and various other media platforms,” Goldschmidt said. 

Outside has committed to covering all five U.S. Ski & Snowboard sports, including every domestic event live. 

Goldschmidt called the breadth of coverage, which greatly increases the number of opportunities people will have to watch ski and snowboard competitions, “a game changer for our sports.” 

The Outside deal also increases the number of platforms and assets U.S. Ski & Snowboard has to package and sell to partners.

The NGB still has its national broadcast partnership with NBC too. 

“They show select races and highlights across NBC, CNBC and Peacock,” Goldschmidt said. 

That deal runs through 2025. 

The NGB executive did not want to publicly disclose the organization's revenue targets two years down the line. 

However, Goldschmidt said she is “very ambitious about how much more growth [U.S. Ski & Snowboard] can see, given the growth [it has] seen in the past season even against tough economic challenges” and is “confident revenue will continue to increase over the coming years.”

If it can, U.S. athletes should increasingly find themselves on the winners’ podium.