Showcase snowboarding event or meaningless NFL game? No contest

How popular are the X Games, which give a prominent place to freestyle snowboarding? Not as popular as you might think. Numbers from this year’s event isn’t yet available, but last year the games averaged 1.6 million viewers per night.

Yesterday, the closing night of the games featured the men’s superpipe competition. Shaun White won (for a record fourth consecutive year) but in terms of viewers, the winner, far and away, was the NFL’s all-star game, which had some 13.4 million viewers. Note that many observers believe that the game was a dud.