Is Freestyle the most underestimated winter sport in DACH sponsorship?

Sponsorship Activation

Joel Liimatainen flippt vom Top Rope. Foto: Markus Fischer | Rock A Rail Tour eröffnet beim Hintertux Park Opening 2025

In February, 832,000 people in Austria watched Anna Gasser's Big Air qualification at the Olympic Games. That gave ORF a market share of 31 percent, and it was only the qualification, not the final. For a sport that is often seen as a niche in our country, this is an impressive figure.

And the next big freestyle highlight is just around the corner: the home World Championships in Montafon take place in March 2027. I therefore took a closer look at what makes these disciplines tick, who actually watches, which events are coming up, what role Ski Austria plays, what other brands are already doing, and what you should watch out for if you want to get involved.

What Freestyle Is at Its Core

When I talk about freestyle in this article, I mean the park disciplines in freeskiing and snowboarding. They are divided into three main formats:


  • Slopestyle: A course full of rails and kickers, where the entire run counts toward the score.

  • Big Air: A single, gigantic jump, often staged as an evening show under floodlights.

  • Halfpipe: Acrobatic tricks inside a pipe of snow, run after run.


A jury evaluates difficulty, execution and style. In addition, there is a distinct subculture centered around music, fashion and video edits that is in many ways closer to skateboarding and surfing than to traditional alpine skiing.

With Anna Gasser, Austria has a two-time Olympic champion in snowboard Big Air, who is competing in her farewell season this winter. At the same time, a strong new generation is pushing to the top of the world in freeskiing.

Who Actually Watches This?

This is probably the most important question for marketing decision-makers. The answer comes from several sources.

ORF broadcasts freestyle World Cups live. During the Olympics, the reach was enormous. The 2026 Games reached 6.1 million people on ORF, a new record, and Anna Gasser's Big Air qualification was not far behind a classic alpine downhill race in terms of viewers.

Outside of the Olympics, freestyle is also regularly on television. The Big Air finals at Kreischberg were broadcast live on ORF 1 in 2025, as was the Big Air in Klagenfurt's Wörthersee Stadium. For the World Cup final in Silvaplana, ORF split its coverage between ORF 1 and ORF SPORT +. ORF holds the live rights to ÖSV events up to and including the 2026/27 season, while ServusTV shows highlights.

ORF does not publish ratings for individual freestyle World Cups. For comparison, the 2023/24 alpine World Cup reached around 5.3 million people on ORF 1 over the season. Freestyle World Cups certainly reach fewer people. The fact that the finals still air on ORF's main channel, often in the evening under floodlights, is a strong signal in my view.

On social media, the audience is young and surprisingly female. According to TikTok figures from the FIS Park & Pipe channel:


  • 66 percent of the audience is 34 or younger

  • 55 percent are female

  • Germany is the second-largest market after the USA


FIS attributes the high share of women to the strong visibility of female athletes. That is an argument I rarely see in traditional winter sports.

On the mountain, it is mainly young people who are in the park. Data from the Austrian cable car industry shows that the share of skiers is highest among 14- to 25-year-olds, at around 51 percent, and this age group uses funslopes and snowparks the most. Young people name the feeling of freedom as their main motivation for skiing and snowboarding.

A similar picture emerges internationally. Before the Beijing 2022 Games, a GWI survey across nine markets found that snowboarding was the Winter Olympic sport Gen Z most wanted to follow. Ahead of Milano Cortina, 62 percent of surveyed Americans named snowboarding as a sport they were most likely to watch, more than any other sport.

To be honest, there is no study for the DACH region that looks specifically at freestyle fans. However, the direction is the same across all sources. Freestyle reaches a young audience that consumes a lot via clips and social media and is active on the slopes themselves.

The 2026/27 Freestyle Winter in Austria and Switzerland

The FIS Park & Pipe season includes around 27 World Cup competitions at eleven venues in six countries. Several of the highlights take place in Austria and right next door:


  • AIRDRENALINE, Innsbruck (November 26 to 28, 2026): For the first time, a FIS Big Air World Cup for freeski and snowboard takes place at the Bergisel, combined with concerts by K.I.Z, SSIO, Bonez MC & RAF Camora and Badmómzjay. Around 20,000 visitors are expected, and Friday was already sold out by late October.

  • Big Air World Cup Kreischberg (January 8 and 9, 2027): Award ceremony, music, afterparty and free admission.

  • LAAX OPEN, Switzerland (January 13 to 16, 2027): One of Europe's most important freestyle festivals, presented by Zalando.

  • FIS Snowboard, Freestyle and Freeski World Championships, Montafon (March 6 to 21, 2027): According to the organizers, the largest winter sports event in Vorarlberg's history. Big Air takes place at the Nordic Center Tschagguns, slopestyle in Silvretta Montafon and halfpipe in Kühtai.


After Kreischberg in 2015, this is the second Freestyle World Championships in Austria. Alongside the park disciplines, ski cross, snowboard cross, moguls, aerials and the parallel events are also part of the program.

For brands, this means a story can be told across the entire winter, from the start in Innsbruck to the home World Cup in January and the home World Championships in March. Anyone who gets involved now has more than four months until the World Championships to build a partnership with an athlete.

Ski Austria and the Austrian Team

In its squad guidelines, Ski Austria groups freeski, snowboard freestyle and moguls under the umbrella of "Freestyle". For the 2026/27 season, the federation has nominated around 350 squad athletes across eleven disciplines. The freeskiers are divided into the national team and the A, B and C squads.

Selection is based mainly on results in the World Cup, European Cup and Junior World Championships. For the next generation in the C squad, there is also a list of tricks that male athletes must master. For women, it serves as a guideline.

Athletically, the team has made a big leap in a short time:


  • Lara Wolf won slopestyle silver at the 2025 World Championships in Engadin. It was the first World Championships medal for Austrian women in freeskiing.

  • Matej Svancer won Big Air bronze at the 2026 Olympics in Livigno, Austria's first Olympic medal in freestyle skiing.

  • At AIRDRENALINE in Innsbruck, Svancer, Hannes Rudigier, Julius Forer, Luis Resch, Jakob Buchmeier, Noah Schallert, Lara Wolf and Anna Rauchmann are among the athletes competing for Austria.


For brands, the federation is relevant in three ways:


  1. As a federation partner. Ski Austria works with long-standing partners such as Audi and UNIQA, and since the 2025/26 season, Intersport has been its official retail partner. A partnership at this level is a major investment.

  2. As an event organizer. The World Championships in Montafon are organized by a dedicated Ski Austria company together with the Montafon Ski Club, the local municipalities, Montafon Tourism and the cable car companies. Event partnerships, spaces and on-site activations go through these organizations.

  3. As the framework for individual athletes. Anyone working with a freeskier is working with someone who is part of the federation's system. That comes with rules you should know beforehand. More on that in the last section.


In my view, freeskiing currently offers the best ratio of effort to impact in winter sports. The athletes are internationally successful, many have built their own community, and compared to the alpine national team, far fewer of them are already taken by big brands.

Why Freestyle Athletes Think Like Creators

According to Forbes, Eileen Gu earned around $23.1 million in 2025, making her the highest-paid athlete at the Milano Cortina Winter Games. Less than one percent of that came from prize money. Her two World Cup wins in 2025 brought her a combined total of around $40,000. The rest came from brands such as Porsche, Red Bull, IWC Schaffhausen and TCL.

That is an extreme example, but the underlying pattern applies to the whole scene. A career can hardly be financed through prize money alone. Athletes therefore depend heavily on brands, and many have learned early on to think like creators. They produce their own videos, build their personality on social media and know what content works.

For brands, this has two advantages:


  • Access: Outside the absolute world elite, freestyle athletes are easy for brands to reach. In my view, many of them deliver content at a quality that would cost significantly more with classic influencers.

  • Personality: The scene thrives on humor, style and self-irony. Brands get content that feels natural on Instagram and TikTok and looks very little like advertising.


FIS is also betting heavily on these personalities. Formats in which athletes tell their own stories are a central part of its strategy, and the reach of the FIS channels more than doubled last season to 3.5 billion.

What Brands Are Already Doing in Freestyle

The most exciting examples currently come from brands that have little to do with skiing at first glance:


  • Zalando entered winter sports in 2025 as the presenting partner of the LAAX OPEN. In 2026, it added its own documentary series about Swiss freestyle athletes, a market on the mountain, a free waxing station in the valley and a style contest open to all levels. Zalando calls sport one of the company's most important growth areas.

  • Other LAAX OPEN partners have included Sunrise, Edelweiss, Swatch, Oakley, Burton and Völkl. Telecommunications, an airline and watches sit right next to the classic scene brands.

  • A regional Raiffeisen bank in Graubünden used the 2026 LAAX OPEN to invite young customers from its youth program to the slopestyle event. It is a small but very good example of how a bank can reach a young audience through freestyle.

  • Audi was the title sponsor of the Audi Nines in the Ötztal from 2018. The athletes helped design the course themselves, and the brand became part of an event the scene talked about on its own.





Artikelinhalte

Fotorechte: RUGGLI LAAX

Where Is the Greatest Potential?

I believe the biggest opportunity lies with brands that see freestyle as a way into a young lifestyle audience. Banks, insurance companies, energy providers, telecommunications, food and beverage and fashion often fit better than you might expect. Thanks to the high share of women in the audience, this also applies to brands that want to reach young women.

Three approaches look especially strong to me this winter:


  1. Follow an athlete through the season. From the season start to the home World Championships, you can tell a real story with training, setbacks and the big goal in March.

  2. Be useful on site. Zalando's waxing station is a good example. At a freestyle event, a brand is remembered when it makes the day on the mountain better for spectators and riders.

  3. Work with the scene. Content that athletes help create is far more credible to this audience than a classic campaign with a logo in the picture.


What to Watch Out for When Getting Started

From my work in sports marketing, these are the points where winter sports partnerships most often get stuck:


  • Check exclusivities. Ski Austria has its own partners, and some industries are reserved exclusively for the federation's athletes. Before you negotiate with an athlete, make sure your industry is available.

  • Separate equipment from advertising space. Skis, boards, boots and helmets are often already tied to equipment suppliers. For national team athletes, the logo space on the helmet is often handled through the federation. Social media collaborations are usually much more flexible.

  • Clarify content rights in advance. If you want to film at a World Cup or the World Championships yourself, you need the organizer's approval, especially for video on the competition grounds.

  • Start early. Many athletes sign their deals before the season. If you want to be part of the home World Championships, start talking now and not in February.

  • Measure what matters. Logo visibility alone says little with this audience. Reach and engagement of the content, clicks on a code or landing page and new followers for the brand are more meaningful.


One caveat belongs here as well. The freestyle scene notices very quickly when a brand only wants to buy visibility. Anyone getting involved needs patience and has to give athletes the freedom to show their own style.

How do you see it? Is freestyle still a niche for brands in the DACH region, or is the sport already part of your planning?

Sources



Sportsventure

Sportsventure

Aufhören Geld bei Sponsorings auf dem Tisch liegen zu lassen?

Aufhören Geld bei Sponsorings auf dem Tisch liegen zu lassen?

Dann buch dir einen Termin für ein kostenloses Strategiegespräch und wir maximieren den Werbewert deines Sponsorings

Strategiegespräch

Strategiegespräch