Action sports have undergone dramatic growth, commercialization, and institutionalization over recent decades. This book uncovers the social, political, economic and organizational dynamics of their professionalization.

Guillaume Dumont is Assistant Professor at OCE Research Center, emlyon Business School, France. He is the author of Professional Climber: Creative Work on the Sponsorship Labor Market (2018), exploring ethnographically the working lives of professional rock climbers in North America and Europe.

Holly Thorpe is Professor of Sociology of Sport and Physical Culture at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. She is the author of Snowboarding Bodies in Theory and Practice (2011) and Transnational Mobilities in Action Sport Cultures (2014), and co-author of Action Sports and the Olympic Games: Past, Present, Future (2021).

1. The professionalization of action sports: mapping trends and future directions 2. Dual governance structures in action sports: institutionalization processes of professional snowboarding revisited 3. Organizational evolution and the Olympic Games: the case of sport climbing 4. The gendered emotional labor of male professional 'freesurfers' digital media work 5. Young Dutch commercially sponsored kite surfers: free as a bird? 6. The glocalization of parkour: a New Zealand/Aotearoa case study 7. Professionalisation of action sports in Australia