The Sports Page: 'Funny or Die' Shreds Some Pavement

Will Farrell and Adam McKay are expanding their Funny or Die franchise with Shred or Die, an action sports video portal headlined by Tony Hawk. Or Die Networks plans to launch more sites in the coming months, formed through similar partnerships with celebrities and sports stars.

Shred or Die focuses on skating, surfing, BMX and motocross.  It offers a more user-based experience than competing extreme sports sites where users can browse one another by popularity and activity level. Tony Hawk regularly updates his video picks for the best user-generated content, like this fine piece…

The site also features enhanced video player functionality, including user-controlled slow-motion and frame-by-frame viewing, ideal for the particularly discerning extreme sports enthusiast.

Extreme sports are growing niches with strong communities, but are often under-served by traditional TV, which can rarely maintain adequate viewership to substantiate its programming. This makes them ideally suited for online video which can help form communities around narrow genres. EXPN.com, the best known of the competition, has focused on professional extreme sports content, most of which surrounds ESPN’s X Games.  Extreme.com offers a similar video portal consisting of clips from their UK based TV network.

Shred or Die could quickly become the new online home for extreme sports fans, but only time will tell if the combination of celebrity videos and user-generated content will drive enough traffic to build a community around the brand.