Most professional snowboarders have to learn to bartend somewhere along the way to pay the bills before those first big sponsorships come through. For Shaun White, the mixology skills came after his Olympic medals.
The former professional snowboarder and skateboarder got a crash course from PATRÓN representatives before he mixed drinks for hundreds of people at an F1 event at the Wynn in Las Vegas, NV.
“I feel like I leveled up,“ White said. "For the standard house party, I'm going to be crushing the game.”
The men’s halfpipe snowboarding’s Greatest of All Time teamed up with PATRÓN to serve drinks at lounges throughout the Encore Player’s Lounge. His signature cocktail? A spicy twist on a classic, crafted with PATRÓN Silver Tequila and habanero-infused agave.
Steven Blanco
This bartending gig is just the latest side quest for White in retirement. He's already appeared in movies like Good Burger 2 and The Real Bros of Simi Valley. He went to the Paris Olympics. He gave Kid Cudi a snowboarding lesson. Not to mention he’s running a snowboard outerwear and hardgoods company, WHITESPACE, and creating an entirely new professional circuit for the sport called The Snow League.
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Throughout his rise to the top of snowboarding’s pecking order, White has transcended the world of winter sports and entered into mainstream culture in a way few others have been able to. That might be because of his prominence as a professional skateboarder or because he grew up in Carlsbad, CA, rather than in a mountain town. Whatever the reason, he’s working hard in his post-professional snowboarder life to bring snowboarding to the people who might not regularly ride a chairlift.
Last year, his snowboard brand, WHITESPACE, collaborated with the Utah Jazz on a limited-release board and outerwear. The brand has also linked up with luxury brand Moncler for a run of limited-edition snowboards and jackets. When the partnership with PATRÓN was announced, White made a run of co-branded Whitespace x PATRÓN T-shirts for his family and friends to wear during F1 weekend.
The Snow League, a winter sports competition founded by White, will debut in Aspen, CO, in March 2025. It'll feature men’s and women’s halfpipe skiing and snowboarding and aims to pay the winners of both sides the same amount of prize money. In November, the league announced a broadcasting partnership with NBC Sports. As simple as the news might sound, it’s a monumental step for the league already.
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Outside of the Olympics and X Games, watching contest snowboarding live has been nearly impossible. Fellow Olympic Gold Medalist Red Gerard touched upon the issue of live-streaming contests in an interview with the Mark My Bird podcast over the summer.
"You could say FIS [International Ski and Snowboard Federation] struggles with the most, out of anything, is not having live results. I don't understand why—in slopestyle and in boardercross—we can't have a live feed of those events," he said. "You're not going to get anyone to watch it if you don't have a live stream to watch it, and I think it's just something that we, as competitive snowboarders, struggle with so much."
The league has already raised the bar. The X Games announced it will partner with Australian snowboarder Scotty James to create its own year-round league that features a global schedule and team format. The hype this has brought to the world of competitive snowboarding is huge.
While sports like baseball and basketball have continued to see players’ salaries grow exponentially, many snowboarding professionals still struggle to make ends meet, even more so than during the early days of White’s career.
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“I'm so thankful it's getting the reaction it's getting,” White said. “To lock in Aspen, a legendary mountain town, probably one of the most legendary, to lock in NBC as our broadcast partner, to show our athletes leading up to the Olympics and really tell their stories—gosh, that's an amazing thing.”
