California Lutheran University’s Public Relations Student Society of America hosted a panel with Visit Ventura on Monday, Oct. 7 to discuss how they brought the X Games to Ventura, California.
The event included a presentation by Visit Ventura members, a networking opportunity, and a Q-and-A session.
“I think it’s just an interesting behind the scenes look at a popular marketing event so anybody if you’re a comm. major or just a student interested in marketing in general I think it is a great event for you,” Vice President of Cal Lutheran’s PRSSA Amanda Janssen said.
Janssen also spoke about Visit Ventura’s relationship with Cal Lutheran’s PRSSA and how the event was made possible.
“They were actually really responsive. They all seemed very excited to do this. They are being interactive as well just giving a presentation and yeah, they are awesome,” Janssen said.
Visit Ventura is a nonprofit organization that is responsible for promoting the city of Ventura, according to their website. In July 2023 and 2024, they were able to bring the X Games to the Ventura County Fairgrounds. The X Games website describes the event as an action sports competition that takes place in the summer and the winter.
“It was kind of a long journey and it started in 2019 with a simple phone call,” President and CEO of Visit Ventura Marlyss Auster said. “They were scouting different locations. They had been to the Vans Warped Tour and saw the Fairgrounds. They just called and said, ‘Hey, we might be thinking of the X Games in Ventura.’”
Auster said she and her team were concerned about hosting such a big event, but she immediately called the X Games back to start planning the logistics. Auster also said, just as Visit Ventura started to plan the event, the COVID-19 pandemic began, which delayed their plans.
“It was a very long journey and it was quite the process,” Auster said.
Director of Marketing for Visit Ventura Mike Laan said that Auster’s’ persistence made a huge difference, and that X Games ‘belongs’ in Ventura.
“She made sure that she was touching base with them and California is an easy sell for them because it’s skateboarding’s home,” Laan said. “We really took the time to make all these presentations to show them the lineage of Ventura and how perfect it was.”
Auster said that planning the X Games was a lot of work for Visit Ventura as they had a team that consisted of ten members and only about five were full-time employees. She said the work paid off and it sparked Ventura’s hometown pride to a level that it had not seen in years.
The X Games not only put Ventura on a global stage, Auster said, but it helped the community in other ways. According to Auster, 10,755 plastic water bottles were saved with the use of hydration station setups around the fairgrounds, 81 pounds of trash were picked up off the beach, and 9,000 meals and 11,000 pounds of food were donated to residents.
Additionally, the X Games increased the usage of local public transportation, donated $9,000 to the Ventura Unified School District, cleaned up the local river and increased publicity for small local businesses, according to Visit Ventura’s X Games Recap.
“The first word that comes to mind is mind blowing because it truly was a lot of work for a small team. It was hugely successful. Sixteen and a half hours of live coverage on ESPN of X Games, and it is still playing to this day. It felt like Ventura to us,” Auster said.
According to the team, Visit Ventura won many awards as a result of its X Games success. Among them are the Visit California Poppy Award for the best strategic partnership and the U.S. Travel Association Educational Seminar for Tourism Organizations Destiny Award for community engagement. It also received four Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International Adrian Awards.
“We really make up the DNA of what their games celebrate, and we wanted to bring them back to California,” Auster said.
