As snow boarding continues to evolve and gain popularity, more and more competitions are becoming available for riders to show off there skills. The main goals of competing are to gain sponsorships, and gain popularity. Sponsors are vital to a professional snow boarders career. Sponsors help pay for a number of things such as equipment, and clothing. Aside from helping riders pay for the costly equipment, sponsors also help gain a rider popularity. The exposure that riders get is also very important to professional success in this sport. Gaining popularity helps up and coming professional riders gain more sponsors and more importantly catches the attention of major snow boarding competitions. The most major competitions today are hands down the olympics, and the X-Games.
The X Games is an event that features every type of extreme sport one could possibly imagine. The events range from snow boarding and skateboarding, to dirt bikes and snowmobiles. This is a very popular extreme sports competition, that rewards its best athletes with gold, silver and bronze medals.
The Olympics is a competition that features athletes from all over the world, and represents just about every sport. "Extreme sports" such as snow boarding and skateboarding are somewhat new to the Olympics, however, they are growing in popularity and allowing other extreme sports to be included in the Olympics.