I'll come at this from a completely different sport: Motocross/Supercross.
If you don't know what it is, it's this > http://youtube.com/v/Jj6IKYrAhvA - off road bikes, racing in stadiums in the US and outdoors in most of the rest of the world. It's a decent sized action sport (they fill 80,000 seater stadiums just about in the US, and a good event in Europe will get 50,000 people) - the top guys are probably on 2-5 mill a year.
About 15-20 years ago, they started with the "Freestyle Motocross Movement", where you had guys starting to do tricks. The sport progressed, some good racers moved across the freestyle and it really grew. They started backfipping, then the double backflip came in 2006 and everything seemed to be dandy. In the early 2010's (is that even a phrase?!), things started to get a bit stale. Everyone could backflip, everyone could backflip no hands etc, and the sport started to decline because the innovation that had pushed it so far had started to slide.
Skipping forward to now, it's slid even more and even fewer people are interested. They have had some innovation with guys landing new tricks, and more insane-ness - but in general no one really cares any more, it's only really the indoor shows and Red Bull X Fighers that survive (http://youtube.com/v/KSKrMJV5-To - it's on Dave). Supercross/Motocross has carried on growing at a steady rate, and is far, far, far more popular)
I foresee the same thing happening with Skiing. Yes, it's way cooler to look at free ski (heck, those are the dudes I really think are sick - for me, Cody Townsend is so much cooler than Hirscher!) but it can only go so far, and how much further it can go is questionable. It definitely has a place, but racing will always have that X factor.
Having said that, if I ran it... I'd instantly ban lycra, ha.
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Poster: A snowHead
