ESPN brought X Games to Austin for the first year of a four-year deal at Circuit of The Americas. The X Games logo during X Games Austin 2014 reflected some Texas spirit. (Photo by Phil Ellsworth / ESPN Images)
About 160,000 fans showed up over three days for the first Austin iteration of the X Games, the international action sports competition that ESPN first launched in 1995. It marked the first time the event was held at a racetrack. X Games organizers took advantage of the huge amount of space at the 350-acre Circuit of the Americas (COTA) in Austin, Texas, by debuting a new model with nine festival villages.
“Each village was themed a bit different to kind of resemble the feel and look of Austin,” said Deane Swanson, ESPN X Games Sr. director of Event Operations.
The Playground offered something for all ages, featuring swings and bungee jumping, while the Sound Factory offered an area for music enthusiasts to enjoy a silent disco and guitar hero competitions. There was also a stage set up that showcased X Games: Battle of the Bands.
The Galleria served as the home for sponsorship activations as well as a few unique opportunities X Games added including a barbershop.
“People could get X Games haircuts or get ‘X Games’ shaved into their hairstyle,” said Swanson, who added he saw people walking around with the new do's. “We tried to mix in a little bit of personality at each of these locations.”
ESPN X Games built concrete skate courses directly on the track at the start-finish straight, usually the home to lines of Formula One cars or MotoGP motorcycles. (Photo by Circuit of the Americas)
Other festival villages focused on sustainability at both ESPN and COTA, racing, and even a Texas Ranch to add local flavor with plenty of bbq.
Competitors even won medals at one of the villages, though not for a traditional action-sports contest. Major League Gaming came to X Games for the first time, using the Gaming Shack as the venue for the inaugural MLG X Games Invitational tournament. The professional gaming competition brought the world’s best Call of Duty: Ghosts teams to compete for real X Games medals.
The festival village model is something that ESPN and X Games will bring back to Circuit of the Americas and, if applicable, future X Games venues with available space.
“We created kind of a pathway through all of these villages to get to our competitions, so people would experience most of these activations on their way to seeing the sporting events,” said Swanson.
Expanding from essentially three main spaces for major sponsors, interactive events, and on-site sponsors at previous X Games didn’t come cheap. However, the overall budget stayed in line with previous X Games due to cost savings from utilizing the bulk of COTA.
“I’d say that the costs went up growing and building out the festival villages concept, but there’s infrastructure here that we’ve taken advantage of so that we don’t have to build from scratch or have something temporary brought in, so we had significant savings from taking advantage of the facilities here,” Swanson said.
Also, each festival village brought the opportunity for more sponsors and larger footprints for existing partners, increasing overall sponsorship for the event.
Mike Brown during Moto X - Enduro X Men's practice at X Games Austin 2014 at Circuit of the Americas. (Photo by Eddie Perlas / ESPN Images)
The venue itself provided cost savings by having so much available space.
“They have 36 garages. When we started talking about this year’s games we thought we’d use six of the garages — we ended up using them all,” said Swanson.
In the past, X Games would bring in tents to have dedicated spaces for medical services, storage, athlete registration and media areas.
“Just about every part of the developed Circuit of the Americas was in use with the exception of the far reaches like Turn 11,” said Julie Loignon, VP of Public & Media Relations at Circuit of the Americas. “We wanted to try and keep as intimate and compact a feel as possible and it also makes it easier for us to maintain and service the event because it’s where a lot of our permanent facilities are, such as restrooms.”
X Games organizers had a big challenge ahead of them after Austin won the bid for X Games 2014-1017. How would they build competition spaces without damaging the $400-million facility, which opened in October 2012, and its biggest asset: its track?
“That was the exact question we asked ourselves when we decided we’d come here,” said Swanson, who added that COTA has been open to everything X Games decided to do.
Their solution: build directly on top of the track, but be careful. Organizers used a combination of steel plates, traffic mats from the Department of Transportation and 4-by-8-foot sheets of three-quarter inch plywood.
Organizers mounded dirt at the track's Turn 12 to create the Endurocross course. (Photo by Circuit of the Americas)
The conversion completely transformed the track with the use of not only dirt, but also concrete to create competition spaces. The rallycross course was constructed between Turns 12 and 15, with the Endurocross course claiming Turn 12. X Games built a concrete skate course right on the track at the start-finish straight, pouring the cement on top of protective layers, feet away from the precious asphalt.
“We certainly did see our Formula One racetrack presented in a brand new light, which was fun and surprising for us, especially to see different sections and turns repurposed and turned into entirely different, complete tracks,” said Loignon.
ESPN and Circuit of the Americas share costs for load-in and load-out.
Load-out is happening right now — and everyone’s in a hurry. Porsche is hosting its product launch at the track on Monday, which means the track has to be cleared by Friday and every trace of X Games must be removed by the beginning of the week.
Weather could pose a threat to the speed of the load-out. On Monday June 9, the first day after the event, lightning struck within eight miles of the track, causing all work to be suspended for a half hour.
The big air ramp during X Games Austin 2014 at Circuit of the Americas. (Photo by Phil Ellsworth / ESPN Images)
Severe weather also created a slight hiccup during the competition, with high winds leading to the cancellation of the Moto X Freestyle competition. All attendees who had bought upgrades for the event received refunds.
Three-day GA tickets for X Games cost $89, with upgrades available for premium viewing platforms for competitions and for floor or pit areas for concerts. Single-day tickets ran $39-$59, and X Games access with reserved amphitheater seating cost $139 for a three-day pass and $165 for three-day pit access. There was an upgrade designed just for gaming fans, too. The ‘3-Day Major League Gaming Premium Upgrade secured reserved seating in the gaming tent, a tour, meet-and-greets with the top players, and gift bags including Major League Gaming merchandise for $189.
All ticketing was handled through Circuit of the Americas, which uses Ticketmaster. Austin-based Front Gate Tickets supplied RFID wristbands. X Games asked fans to register their wristbands in order to keep track of what they were doing and where they were going around the property. Attendees could also opt in for emails or texts with information or contests.
Performers at Austin360 Amphitheater, the venue within COTA, included Kanye West, Pretty Lights, The Flaming Lips, Gary Clark, Jr., Bad Religion, and Mayer Hawthorne, among others. EDM artists like Cash Cash, and Candyland spun records in the Velocity EDM Lounge and additional music performances took place at the KUTX Austin Music Stage, sponsored by a local radio station.
Both ESPN X Games and COTA took away lessons from this first iteration of the event. Though COTA has an existing shuttle system that works well to bring people from the parking lots to the entrance, Swanson said he wants to explore options to make it more convenient for people to get around while inside the event.
He also plans to look at additional viewing options for the park course and street course.
“By the very nature of those courses being somewhat of a bowl, we have to start viewing at about 14-18 feet, so sightlines for those are a bit more difficult,” said Swanson. “We’ll have to find a way to get more viewing available.”
Flaming Lips perform at X Games Austin 2014 on June 8 at Circuit of the America's Austin360 Amphitheater. (Photo by Tomas Zuccareno / ESPN Images)
For COTA, the plan is to work on improving efficiencies within the operation and taking guest feedback into consideration. Because of the sheer size of the event, employees who normally sat at desks were out having a frontline experience catering to the needs of the 160,000 attendees.
“I think first-year events are always very instructional,” said Loignon. “The key thing is that both ESP and COTA really mesh now — our event production team is practically best friends with their equivalent at ESPN.”
One thing both sides of the equation agree on is that Austin is a great fit for X Games. Not only does it fit the event demographic, being a young university town, it also has a music scene that’s very strong.
“When COTA came into the mix, now we have a facility and a racetrack so we don’t have to build one in downtown Los Angeles and tie up traffic, which is already a challenge in the city,” said Swanson. “Circuit of the Americas has the latest in all of the infrastructure you need for racing and, being a racetrack, is very safety-oriented.”
For COTA, X Games provided a more relatable event than others previously hosted at the track.
“A lot of the series we feature are based overseas, so there’s not the same familiarity with the drivers and teams. This was something easier to understand and had an ‘all-American’ feel to it,” said Loignon, who added that the hype and buzz around the event was the biggest of anything the track has hosted to date.
X Games attracted many first-time attendees to the track, which Loignon hopes will translate into bigger attendance for motorsports events and the amphitheater series.
“It was kind of an introduction point for a lot of new fans in our venues who hadn’t had the time or a reason to come see us yet and they were impressed with the new facility,” she added. “X Games Austin became the springboard for them to come visit.”
Interviewed for this story: Julie Loignon, (512) 655-6251; Deane Swanson, (310) 642-1509