X Games hires former UFC and Williams Racing executive to sell X Games and its new league

Paul Asencio's job now is to turn the X Games audience into partnership revenue. That audience topped 150,000 fans at its winter and summer 2026 events.

X Games has appointed Asencio as Chief Revenue Officer, starting November 9. Reporting to CEO Jeremy Bloom, he will oversee sponsorship sales, global partnerships and commercial revenue strategy across both X Games and the MoonPay X Games League (XGL). SportBusiness reported that the hire is part of X Games' continued push to strengthen its leadership team. It comes after what SportBusiness called a "strong" debut for the new-look X Games League this summer.

X Games' own announcement, published October 29, describes the year as a breakout. It points to sold-out competitions and the brand's strongest TV viewership in nearly a decade. That's the pitch Asencio walks in with, and it's the pitch he'll be expected to put a price on.

The timing matters more than the title. Asencio starts between the league's first summer season and its first winter season, which opens in January 2027. For a brand partnerships director weighing action sports for next year, the person setting the commercial terms is about to change, and the product he's selling is still taking shape.

The audience he inherits

Those summer crowds came across three stops: Sacramento; Chiba, Japan; and New Orleans. So the league's first season already crossed the Pacific. For a sponsor, that suggests the summer product works as a touring property with an Asian market in the schedule, not just one U.S. weekend with a bigger banner.

The figure most useful to a sponsor sits a level down. X Games says 7.5 million viewers watched more than one summer stop. A league is selling a season-long story with rivalries and a championship, so repeat viewing is the number that shows whether people follow the story or just catch one event.

There's also a counterpoint, and it comes from the same release. An audience that is the largest in eight years means the X Games has drawn crowds this size before. So the Aspen number reads at least partly as a return to an earlier peak. All of these figures are self-reported, too. Buyers who price media off independent measurement will want to see how they hold up across a second season.

Eight clubs, two seasons, one title sponsor

The league is the reason this hire is about more than another sponsorship deck. The league turns the X Games from standalone events into eight clubs across two seasons, and every club is another line a partnerships team can put on a rate card.

It also changes what sits underneath the events. XGL brought in structured seasons, teams and expanded compensation opportunities for athletes. Bloom said X Games spent "the last two years building an entirely new model for action sports," and described the result as "a professional sports league with eight teams and a growing global footprint."

Ownership groups are in place for six of the eight clubs. XC New York competes in both winter and summer, plus XC Los Angeles and XC São Paulo in summer and XC Golden State and XC Park City in winter. MoonPay, the title sponsor, holds the options on the remaining two: XC Tokyo for summer and XC Whistler for winter.

The owners are not all who you might expect. In June, SportBusiness reported that XC São Paulo had been sold to the UAE's Summit Ventures, and separately that private equity investor Thorpe had moved for XGL clubs. Outside capital from the Gulf and from private equity suggests the clubs are being treated as assets with their own commercial value, which is exactly what a club-level sponsorship market would need.

For brands that buy sponsorship market by market, the club structure could be the more interesting entry point. A regional advertiser that would never pay for a global title deal might find a São Paulo or Park City club an easier fit. Since the release lists local team markets as one of the partner channels, the club tier is clearly part of the pitch. Whether X Games sells those local deals itself or leaves them to club owners is something the announcement doesn't spell out, and it's the first question a partnerships buyer would ask.

A résumé built on partnership growth

Asencio has more than 25 years of commercial experience. He spent more than five years as senior vice president of global partnerships at UFC, a stretch in which UFC's global sponsorship revenue more than tripled. As chief revenue officer at Williams Racing he ran commercial and marketing operations, and X Games credits him with helping increase the Formula 1 team's commercial partnerships by 150 percent in one year.

Earlier in his career, according to the full release as republished by OneElevate, he spent 17 years with the New York Mets and rose to senior vice president of corporate partnerships, sales and services. After that he spent two years as vice president of event business development at Fanatics. Most recently he was executive vice president of global partnerships at Playfly Sports.

The Mets years could prove the most relevant line for this job. Selling corporate partnerships for a club rooted in one city is close to the problem XGL's club tier poses, while UFC and Williams are the reference points for the global title and league-wide deals.

Those two headline results measure different things. The UFC figure is revenue. The Williams figure tracks partnerships. Both come from properties that were growing their fan bases quickly, and that's the situation X Games says it's in now.

Bloom framed the next phase as converting momentum into a sustainable, scalable global business, and he pointed to Asencio's role in commercial growth at UFC and in F1. He also credited Asencio with knowing how to build high-performing teams, form meaningful partnerships and turn passionate fans into long-term value. Asencio said he had seen firsthand how UFC reached new audiences and how F1 grew its fan base. What drew him, he said, was a globally recognized brand paired with the momentum of an entirely new league model, and a professional league gives partners year-round opportunities that a single-event brand could not.

January in Aspen, Calgary and Ruka

Aspen, Colorado; Calgary, Canada; and Ruka, Finland will host events when the first XGL winter season gets underway in January 2027. The season will be the first full test of the two-season model, and brands will have to decide whether to stay with the league as it moves from summer into the snow.

The winter map follows the summer pattern. Chiba took the summer season to Asia, and Calgary and Ruka take winter into Canada and Europe. That gives Asencio's team a schedule it can sell to partners with interests beyond the U.S., alongside the ABC and ESPN audience that Aspen already delivers.

Two signals will show how fast Asencio's team is moving. One is whether MoonPay takes up its options on XC Tokyo and XC Whistler, which would put all eight clubs under ownership. The other is the list of partners on the boards in Aspen. New names there, especially at club level, would suggest the league model is bringing in money the old event calendar couldn't reach.