• by John Gaffney , April 13, 2003

Hold on there, dude. Just because the NFL, MLB and the Olympics are the focus of this year's sports upfront, don't forget the kids and the events that turned the last Winter Olympics on their ear. We're talking snowboarding, skiing and the whole ultra adrenaline culture that went with it.

No one expects extreme sports to cut into anybody's budget this year. Skateboarding is not (yet) an Olympic event. But Fox Sports is paying more attention to extreme sports with an entire 24 hour channel called Fuel. Fox also has an extreme sports show called 5-4-3-2-1. NBC retains its Gravity Games franchise, and ESPN still has the X Games. There's plenty of inventory up for grabs, and a young culture out there to get a brand in front of.

"I met with the Fox sports people and I know they're doing quite well with their extreme sports properties," said Bill Carter CEO of extreme sports talent and promotions agency Fuse Integrated marketing. "The last Olympics added to some of that hype. Although I'm not sure of it's a sport you need to buy upfront. It has seen double and triple digit growth over the past few years but still, an urgent upfront kind of buy might not be in order."

Carter says that after the 2002 Olympics in Salt Lake brands were signing onto some kind of extreme sports promotion at the rate of almost one a month. That rate has slowed, he said. But from other perspectives, the category looks like it's retaining its extreme sports phenom status.

"It is a category that continues to attract advertisers and marketers, and some of them are leading a demand for new programming," said George Krieger, whose production company Apparent Gravity Media has been and is continuing to an extreme sports program supplier. "The smart advertisers have grasped on to a way to get to young adults who drink soda, play video games, buy packaged goods and watch movies as well as other activities. I think in addition to just action footage on TV, you'll start to see more programming that goes to the lifestyle of these kids."