X Games sells new Park City winter team for 2027 league

A private equity investor with a home in Park City has bought the XC Park City Winter Club, giving Summit County a named place in the X Games’ new league structure before the first winter season even begins. The club is expected to field 10 athletes, five men and five women, and it is slated for the inaugural 2027 winter season.

The sale matters locally because X Games is no longer treating action sports as a single annual show. The MoonPay X Games League is set to launch in Summer 2026 as a global, team-based format with summer X Clubs and winter X Clubs, and the company says the new model is meant to build season-long narratives while creating more earning and sponsor opportunities for athletes. The winter branch, the Winter X Games League, is set to debut in early 2027, making Park City one of the first markets tied to the rollout.

Allen Thorpe, who also bought XC Los Angeles, said he has long looked for sports investments and saw Park City as a natural fit because it is a winter sports mecca built around skiing. He said he wants to bring more world-class excellence to town after Sundance’s departure. Thorpe also said he plans to hire a general manager and leave coaching to athletes’ existing coaches, while building community engagement opportunities around the franchise.

That creates a different kind of local stake for Summit County: not just a branding exercise, but a potential platform for athlete development, sponsorship activity and future event discussions. X Games has said the league will include eight clubs overall, and Park City now sits inside a system that could pull in more training, marketing and hospitality spending if the format gains traction.

The timing also comes after X Games returned to Utah in 2025 for a three-day Salt Lake City event that drew more than 40,000 fans, while television viewership rose 12% from the organization’s 2024 event. Jeremy Bloom later said X Games was considering a Park City or Utah winter event. With Woodward Park City already part of the local action-sports ecosystem and Park City athletes continuing to show up at X Games Aspen 2026, the new club gives the Wasatch Back a more direct claim on a league built to stretch far beyond one weekend in the mountains.

A winter club in New York City has already been sold in an eight-figure transaction, and X Games has named winter Founder Athletes including Chloe Kim, Eileen Gu, Jamie Anderson, Mark McMorris, Scotty James and Zeb Powell. For Park City, the franchise is more than a logo. It is a sign that the city’s ski identity now carries enough market value to attract real capital in a league designed to live year-round.