Image via the Google.

SBS (of all places) is reporting that snowboarding has lost its cool. “Participation in the sport dropped 28 per cent from 2003-2013” with “snowboarders making up just under 28 per cent of visitors to US resorts, down from about 31 per cent the year before” and snowboard sales dropping 25% from their peak in ’08/’09 according to the article. These are all U.S. stats but we’re likely to see them replicated with a slight delay in Aus.

There’s no raw data to look at but anecdotally, this could be an interesting point in the life of snowboarding to date where it starts to settle into some of the patterns that have been around in skateboarding and snowboarding for decades. Saturation levels of coverage for riders and events, plus use in advertising to sell random products, dilute what the sport is about and make it untouchable for a couple of years. Then when all is forgotten, we start again. Skateboarding and surfing have been learning to control that better and better – snowboarding might be about to start that process.

Then again, my theory might be shit. Who knows? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Read the full article over here.