ESPN and Caffeine, a social broadcasting platform, will launch an interactive streaming experience for this weekend’s winter X Games in Aspen.
As part of the deal, roughly 10 hours of X Games Aspen content will be available on an X Games-branded channel on the Caffeine platform. Users will also be able to host their own interactive streams that feature X Games content, enabling friends to watch and interact with streams together.
Users will be able to chat during streams, which will be hosted by accomplished athletes, including Olympic gold medalist and five-time X Games gold medalist freestyle skier Maddie Bowman, Olympic bronze medalist and four-time X Games medalist freestyle skier Brita Sigourney, and Olympic bronze medalist and four-time X Games medalist snowboarder Scotty Lago.
Interactive digital streams are becoming an increasingly sought after method of attracting new users. This is a method Amazon Prime deployed late last year with Thursday Night Football.
“Working with companies like Caffeine provides the X Games exposure to potentially new audiences while giving X Game fans another innovative way to experience the event,” said Tim Reed, VP of the X Games, in a statement.
The streams run from Thurs., Jan. 24 through Sun., Jan. 27, and feature everything from Men’s Snowboard Big Air Elimination to Snowmobile Freestyle, then Snowboard Knuckle Huck and the Harley-Davidson Snow Hill Climb. The content will also be available on X Games social platforms, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube channels.
Caffeine is a part of The Walt Disney Company’s Accelerator program, which connects select companies from around the world with the creativity, imagination, expertise and the network of Disney. This X Games collaboration is a product of that program.