As reported on www.forbes.com by Kurt Badenhausen

Snowboarder Shaun White was down to his last chance after falling during his first two runs of the men's half-pipe competition at last month's Winter X Games. It was the culminating event in the four day contest that drew 68,000 fans to Aspen, Colo. Once again, White delivered. He ripped off a stellar final run that included back-to-back 1080s (three complete rotations in the air) to win the gold.

White's payday for winning one of his sport's biggest competitions: a paltry $30,000. By comparison, Geoff Ogilvy earned $1.1 million for winning golf's 2009 opening event, the Mercedes-Benz Championship.
Article Controls

But the snowboarding and skateboarding phenom crowned the Flying Tomato will get his money. We estimate that White earned $9 million in 2008 thanks to lucrative endorsement deals with Burton, Hewlett-Packard, Oakley, Red Bull and Target. His earnings are almost entirely from sponsors, as yearly prize money for skateboarders and snowboarders rarely tops $100,000. White's endorsement take is greater than any baseball or football player outside of quarterback Peyton Manning.

CLICK HERE FOR A SLIDESHOW OF THE HIGHEST-PAID ACTION SPORTS STARS IN PICTURES

White is the Tiger Woods of today's action sports stars. He wins more than anybody else, and his fame far eclipses that of his competition. Other action sports stars are starting to get noticed by a broader audience, and that has meant bigger paychecks, thanks to rich sponsorship deals.

With this in mind, we decided to take a look at who makes what in action sports. Through interviews with industry experts we estimated 2008 earnings for the top stars in the more traditional sports like snowboarding, skateboarding, surfing and BMX. We excluded Motocross racing, which straddles the line between action sports and motor sports and top riders like Chad Reed and James Stewart can make as much as $5 million racing around a dirt track.

The top 10 earners in 2008 were all male. Top female snowboarders like Torah Bright, Gretchen Bleiler and Hannah Teter make as much as $750,000 annually, but that fell short of our $1 million cut off.
Comment On This Story

Shaun White is the top earner among the current crop of action sports stars, but the highest-paid guy in the game is still Tony Hawk, the godfather of action sports. Hawk retired from competitive skating in 1999 at the age of 31, but he has built a thriving business that earned him $12 million last year. Hawk dominated skateboard competitions through the 1980s and '90s, winning 71% of the events that he entered during his 17-year career. Despite his success, Hawk found that he could not support his family financially by just competing, so he launched his own skateboard company, Birdhouse Projects, in 1992.

Hawk parlayed his skating success into a business empire that includes his own Boom Boom Huckjam action sports tour, a clothing line available at Kohl's and Tony Hawk's Big Spin roller coasters at Six Flags. He also created a videogame with Activision, "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater," that launched in 1999. It is one of the best-selling videogame franchises of all time with $1.2 billion in sales since its launch. The latest version hits stores in October. Today, Tony Hawk Inc. employs 30 people at offices outside of San Diego. Last year, Tony Hawk branded product sales were $200 million.

Hawk is still a big name with teens, despite being retired for 10 years. TRU, a market research firm focused on the under-30 set, does an annual study on awareness and likability of celebrities. The top athlete in its 2008 report amongst teens was Hawk, ahead of the likes of LeBron James and Derek Jeter. That is why companies like Activision, Quiksilver, Sirius and T-Mobile are still quick to partner with him.

Corporate money has been pouring into action sports in recent years as the popularity of these sports has taken off with consumers. Participation in skateboarding increased 74% between 1998 and 2007 to 10.1 million participants, the fastest growth of any sport in the U.S. Snowboarding registered the third fastest growth over the same 10-year period, up 42% to 5.1 million participants according to the National Sporting Goods Association.

"These sports are so much fun for participants and accessibility is much better than 20 years ago," says Bob Klein, an action sports pioneer who built the first snowboard half pipe and later became an agent for boarders including Shaun Palmer and Danny Kass.

Walt Disney's ESPN has been hugely influential in expanding the reach of these sports through the X-Games. ESPN launched the first summer competition in 1995 that was billed as the Extreme Games, featuring sports like bungee jumping, eco-challenge, sky surfing and street luge, all events that no longer exist. The Winter X-Games joined the party in 1997.

NBC launched its own action sports competition in 2005, the Dew Tour. The tour features five-stops over four months with prize money totaling $2.5 million, the biggest purse in action sports. Big sponsors on last year's Dew Tour included Sony, Toyota and Wendy's International.

The latest big brand to enter the fray is Gatorade. The sports drink leader announced plans for its first big push into action sports earlier this year. The PepsiCo subsidiary signed three up-and-coming action sports athletes to endorsement deals including 14-year skateboarding phenom Chaz Ortiz.

Peter Carlisle, who heads the Olympics and Action Sports division of sports agency Octagon, says, "Action sports provide a unique platform to reach the masses and the younger demo that is particularly hard to reach through mass marketing."

Good news for today's action sports stars.

Todd Richards will be hosting a party in Truckee, CA after the Winter Dew Tour event wraps up. Check it out if your in the area. It should be a fun time because Todd's a funny guy. If you see Todd tell him MORINformed is sorry for burning him at Oceanside Pier, the wave was just too tempting, I couldn't let a snowboarder have it.

Make sure you RSVP at www.uptheantics.com/dewnorthstar.com

Another Winter X Games has come and gone, but not without high drama, record breaking performances, familiar domination, and even a double back flip on a snowmobile.

The town of Aspen was rocking out once again as massive crowds braved the dumping snow throughout the weekend to enjoy the winter sports version of the Super bowl.

Once again the King of X Games, Shaun White, did not disappoint, winning Gold in SlopeStyle and SuperPipe. White scored the highest point total in X Games SlopeStyle history with a 96.00 . It wasn't as easy in Superpipe after falling on his first 2 runs, in typical legend fashion, White threw down a 91.66 to edge out Kevin Pearce's 90.66. With his 2 gold medals he became the all time leader in gold medals with 9.

The most hyped moment of the event was Levi LaVallee's attempt at a double back flip on a snowmobile. The crowd held their breath as Lavallee flew high into the night sky. Lavallee rotated perfectly only to be bucked off on the landing. Didn't matter to him nor the crowd though, as Lavallee was stoked to be alive after nearly pulling the impossible.

A major upset went down on opening night of Winter X in the men's Ski SuperPipe Final. We expected to see a Tanner Hall, Simon Dumont showdown, but an unknown skier from France, Xavier Bertoni, shocked everyone by overtaking both Hall and Dumont, to win his first ever gold medal.

Australians own Torah Bright surprised no one by winning gold in Women's SuperPipe. She owned the pipe all weekend, in the elimination round she scored the highest point total in Women's pipe with a 97.66.

In the 2 fan voted events, mens big air in snowboard and ski, Travis Rice and Simon Dumont took home the gold. The fans were wowed by Travis Rice's backside-double-cork 1080 in Snowboard, and Simon Dumont 's famous double flip superman pose.

The weekend was full of highlights, check out the results below from each competition courtesy of our friends at ESPN.
ESPN X GAMES




Mens Skiing Super Pipe Results
1. Xavier Bertoni / 93.66 / Bib 333 / La Clusaz, France
2. Tanner Hall / 92.00 / Bib 305 / Kalispell, Mont.
3. Simon Dumont / 91.00/ Bib 303/ Bethel, Main

Womens Sking Super Pipe Results
1.Sarah Burke Whistler, BC, Canada 93.33
2.Jen Hudak Aspen, Colo.92.66
3.Jess Cumming Wilton, Conn. 84.00

Women's Snowboard Slopestlye Final Results
1. Jenny Jones / 84.33 / Bristol, Great Britain / Bib 526
2. Spencer O' (TM)Brien / 80.33 / Whistler, BC, Canada / Bib 530
3. Megan Ginter / 76.66 / Seattle, Wash / Bib 525

Men's Snowboard Slopestyle Results
1. Shaun White 514 Carlsbad, Calif. 96.00
2. Scotty Lago 507 Seabrook, N.H.94.66
3. Mikkel Bang 501 Oslo, Norway 91.33

Women's Snowboarder X
1. Lindsey Jacobellis 634 Stratton, Vt. 110.619
2. Helene Olafsen 638 Oppegard, Norway 113.266
3. Sandra Frei 645 Flims-Dorf, Switzerland 113.505

Men's Snowboarder X
1. Nate Holland 608 Truckee, Calif. 100.523
2. Graham Watanabe 620 Hailey, Idaho 101.153
3. Stian Sivertzen 615 Kongsberg, Norway 105.193

Snowcross Final Results
1. Tucker Hibbert 68 Arctic Cat 1128.255
2. Robbie Malinowski 4 Ski-Doo 1164.864
3. Dan Ebert 602 Arctic Cat 1169.036

Men's Sking Slopestyle
1. Tj Schiller 316 Vernon, BC, Canada 93.00
2. Sammy Carlson 301 Hood River, Ore. 91.00
3. Colby West 315 Breckenridge, Colo. 90.00

Snowmobile Freestyle Final
Final:
1. Joe Parsons 700 Yakima, Wash. 93.66
2. Justin Hoyer 904 Ellsworth, Wis. 82.00

Bronze Match:
3. Heath Frisby 270 Bellevue, Idaho 90.66
4. Daniel Bodin 900 Malung, Sweden 88.00

Men's SuperPipe Finals:
1. Shaun White 514 Carlsbad, Calif. 91.66
2. Kevin Pearce 550 Norwich, Vt. 90.66
3. Antti Autti 542 Rovaniemi, Finland 87.33

The 13th Winter X Games will kick off today in Aspen, Colorado, you know the town Mary Swanson is from. I dunno, my friend Loyd drove there for some chick, Mary, a few years back. Well anyway, it's going to go off. Names like: Travis Rice, Shaun White, Hanna Beaman, Jussi Oksansen and Mason Aguirre, to name a few, are amping to get going.

The first day of the Games will be aired tonight night on ESPN, you know that channel that usually covers all those sports where they play with balls. Coverage is set to start at 9 pm and go to 11 pm ET. That ET stands for Eastern Time, so if you don't live on the Right Coast check your local listings.

Click here to see all of the invited Xers and what events they'll be competing in.

Shawn White and his hair took the Men's Snowboard Superpipe finals at the Dew Tour in Vermont this past weekend. Shawn's been killing it in the inaugural season standings of the Winter Dew Tour, holding down first in both slopestyle and superpipe. Check out the press release below from Allied Sports.

NEW YORK January 11, 2009 - Olympic gold medalist Shaun White won the men (TM)s superpipe finals and hometown hero and fellow gold medalist Kelly Clark won the women' (TM)s event Sunday in the second stop of the inaugural Winter Dew Tour at Mount Snow Resort in West Dover, Vermont.

White's winning run included a backside rodeo 720, a backside 900, back-to-back 1080 into a 720. He finished with an alley-oop rodeo and scored 96.25.

' The first run was really good but I knew I could go a little bigger than I did in that first run,' White said. ' It was a weird run. My glove was kind of iced over and we had to add these marks to my board so I' (TM)d make sure I grabbed it. I went through that second run there and it just all fell together.'

Steve Fisher of Breckenridge, Colo., was second at 92.75 and Kevin Pearce of Norwich, Vt., was third at 90.00.

White now holds the lead in season standings in both the superpipe and slopestyle disciplines.