EDM and action sports: an unlikely pair, yet strangely kindred spirits in the infinite scroll of dopamine hits we call life in 2026.There’s a reason a perfectly landed 1080 and a particularly filthy bass drop produce the same involuntary crowd reaction: both are the payoff of unbearable tension.
Both arrive in a single, irreversible instant.And both, if you’ve ever experienced them live, make you feel like you were there for something that can’t quite be replicated on a screen.
X Games has been engineering those moments for over three decades, but the competition is starting to look different.The Sacramento edition of the newly launched MoonPay X Games League, running June 26–28 at Cal Expo, arrives with Kaskade and Subtronics as headliners of music programming that signals the brand is no longer treating DJs as warm-up acts to the main event.
Performances by those EDM superstars, who are fresh off massive performances at Coachella, will runs parallel to 18 medal competitions featuring over 100 of the world’s top skateboarders, BMX riders and Moto X athletes.“When I was nine, my dad took me to the X Games at City Hall in Philadelphia, and it was the best day of my life,” Subtronics said.
“I’ve always been a huge fan of skateboarding, so getting to be part of this now feels surreal.Honestly, it might be one of the coolest moments of my career so far.
I can’t fully put into words how excited I am.” X Games CEO Jeremy Bloom is a two-time Olympian and four-time World Champion freestyle skier, a former NFL wide receiver, a DJ for MTV, and a serial entrepreneur who has raised tens of millions in venture capital.When he talks about what it takes to hold an audience, he’s drawing from an unusually deep well of lived experience.
That cross-disciplinary fluency shapes everything about how X Games is approaching its music identity.Thanks to its tension-and-release dynamics and genuine overlap with the rebellious DNA of action sport...