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, through similar partnerships with celebrities and sports stars.
Shred or Die is focused on skating, surfing, BMX and motocross and offers a much more user-generated experience than competing extreme sports sites. Users can be browsed by popularity and activity level and Tony Hawk regularly updates his video picks for the best user-generated content.
The site also adds some enhanced features to the video player, such as slow-motion and frame-by-frame options, great for watching content which is meant to be slowed down.
While extreme sports are very popular in some circles they are often under-served by TV which makes them ideally suited for online video.
EXPN.com is the best known of the competition, focused on professional content, most of it surrounding ESPN’s X Games and 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 of extreme sports fans, but only time will tell if the combination of celebrity videos and user-generated content will be enough to drive a larger audience to these sites so they can be monetized.