 | This articleis missing information about event results, participants and other details. Please expand the article to include this information. Further details may exist on thetalk page.(March 2021) |
| Formerly | AST Dew Tour |
|---|---|
| Sport | Extreme sports |
| Founded | 2005 |
| Country | All |
| Broadcaster | NBC Sports |
| Official website | DewTour.com |
TheDew Tour is anextreme sports circuit organized by Coalition 375 LLC, an alliance of elite action sports experts.
The tour was announced in late 2004, and made its debut inLouisville, KY in June 2005. The tour then made stops inDenver,Portland, Oregon, andSan Jose, California, and wrapped up its inaugural season inOrlando, Florida, in October that year. In its first year, the tour was a major success and returned to those five cities in 2006.In 2007, the tour replaced their Louisville, Denver and San Jose stops with events inBaltimore,Cleveland, andSalt Lake City. They did return to Portland and Orlando that year. The Salt Lake City event brought an overall attendance record to the tour. In 2009, the tour was trimmed down to four events for the BMX and skateboard athletes, and three stops for the FMX riders. The tour left Baltimore and Cleveland and brought two sanctioned events toChicago for BMX, and toBoston for skateboarding. The tour continued to return to Portland, Salt Lake City, and Orlando. In 2010, the tour relocated its final event in Orlando toLas Vegas, due to the closure of theAmway Arena. In 2011, the tour was reduced to four stops:Ocean City, Maryland, Portland, Salt Lake City, and Las Vegas. A new event, in skateboard bowl, was introduced in Ocean City.[citation needed]
The first Winter Dew Tour, a spin-off focusing onwinter sports, was held in late 2008–early 2009 with events insnowboarding andfreestyle skiing.[1] The tour made stops at theBreckenridge Ski Resort,Mount Snow,Northstar California. During the 2010–2011 season, the tour returned to Breckenridge, but moved its Vermont stop from Mount Snow to theKillington Ski Resort, and the Tahoe event toSnowbasin inOgden, Utah.[citation needed]
The Dew Tour was originally formed as a joint venture betweenNBC Sports andLive Nation. In 2008, NBC sold a stake in the series toMTV Networks, forming a new joint ventureAlli to manage the series, and broadcasting events onMTV2. Following the acquisition ofNBC Universal byComcast, MTV sold its stake back to NBC in June 2011, with events being aired onNBCSN andComcast SportsNet networks.[2][3]
For 2012, the Dew Tour introduced a brand new tour format. It was reduced to three stops from four, with two summer events in Ocean City andSan Francisco, and one winter event in Breckenridge; management argued that the increased saturation of extreme sports events made it harder to attract athletes to participate. Streetstyle andbig air events were also introduced in San Francisco and Breckenridge respectively. Although total attendance and television viewership was down for the season, the average attendance rose, and viewership of digital content also increased.[4]
In May 2013, theUnited States Ski and Snowboard Association reached an agreement with Alli to allow the Winter Dew Tour event in Breckenridge to serve as a qualifying event for the2014 Winter Olympics team. The arrangement gave the USSA control over certain aspects of the event, such as its format, and selling advertising to its own official sponsors during the telecast, and to promote its own Grand Prix series.[5]
In 2014, the tour returned to Ocean City and Breckenridge, but not San Francisco. They instead brought the tour back to Portland, and then debuted it inBrooklyn, New York. In 2015, the tour was reduced again to two summer events and one winter event. The summer events were held in Chicago andLos Angeles, and the winter event returned to Breckenridge. They also did not have most of their signature events at those stops. The 2014 Ocean City event brought the biggest crowd in the town's history.[citation needed]
In 2015, citing declining television viewership, NBC Sports sold the Dew Tour toTEN: The Enthusiast Network, owner of magazines such asTransworld Skateboarding andTransworld Snowboarding. Under its ownership, major changes were made for the 2016 season; the Dew Tour was further reduced to two events, with a single summer skateboarding meet, and a winter ski and snowboard meet, in Long Beach and Breckenridge respectively. New team competitions were also added to both events. The Dew Tour maintained its relationship with NBC for tape-delayed television broadcasts as brokered programs, but live coverage was shifted to online streaming. In addition, there is a larger focus on year-round social media content involving athletes alongside the two events. TEN also leveraged its complementary properties by moving awards presentations by its winter sports magazines to Breckenridge alongside the Winter Dew Tour event. TEN stated that viewership of the events under the new format had seen increases.[6]
In 2019, TEN's adventure sports portfolio was sold to American Media, LLC. In June 2019, the event once again traveled to Long Beach, California, completing a successful skateboarding street and park event that served as the first-ever US-based Olympic Skateboarding qualification stop.[7] The tour continued with a new venue location for Winter in February 2020, moving to Copper Mountain, Colorado,[8] as well as an additional skateboarding stop in May 2021 (shifted from the previous year due toCOVID-19) that served as the final US-based Olympic Skateboarding qualifier going into the2020 Summer Olympics where skateboarding made its Olympic debut.
In 2024 it was announced that the Winter Dew tour was discontinued and would not be held from 2025 onward.[9]
