Downdays
Austria
Brand overview and significance
Downdays is a European freeski media house that has grown into one of the key reference points for modern ski culture. Founded in 2008 by four friends in Innsbruck, Austria, its original goal was simple and ambitious at the same time: unite the European freeski community and give it its own voice. Under the banner “The Home of Freeski Culture,” Downdays has evolved from a regional web-magazine into a multi-platform brand with a busy website, social feeds, print yearbooks and on-the-ground event presence.
Instead of focusing on race results or purely commercial campaigns, Downdays built its identity around the full spectrum of freeskiing: park, street, freeride, backcountry and human-powered missions. The site curates ski videos from around the world, publishes features and interviews that dig deeper than simple trip recaps, and runs an events and gear section tailored to skiers who live the sport year-round. For skipowd.tv users, Downdays is one of the most useful “companion” brands: where skipowd.tv organizes video in a powerful archive, Downdays adds context with stories, event reports, resort guides and brand overviews that help you understand the scenes behind the clips you watch.
Over more than fifteen years, Downdays has built strong ties to core riders, film crews and brands across Europe. Its editors and contributors regularly highlight emerging crews, independent films and lesser-known resorts alongside the biggest names and venues. That mix of underground energy and professional execution is why you will see Downdays logos on event backdrops, within major brand campaigns, and on the covers of high-quality print books that end up on coffee tables in ski houses across the Alps.
Product lines and key technologies
Downdays is a content and community brand rather than a hardware manufacturer, but it runs a surprisingly structured “product” ecosystem. At the core is a constantly updated website that is split into videos, stories, events and gear, with a dedicated Brand Guide and Resort Guide to help skiers make decisions about equipment and destinations. The videos section curates the best freeride, park, street and all-mountain edits from across the globe, while the stories area hosts interviews, travel features, opinion pieces and culture-focused articles.
The Resort Guide showcases hand-picked destinations that are particularly relevant to freeskiers. It includes heavy hitters like Absolut Park in the Ski amadé network and other European hubs, presented with a focus on terrain, park infrastructure and freeride potential rather than generic tourism language. Parallel to that, the Brand Guide breaks down gear and softgoods companies—from skis and boots to outerwear and safety equipment—giving skiers a readable snapshot of what each brand stands for and which kind of rider it serves.
Long-form print remains an important part of the Downdays offering. The recurring Ski Stories yearbook series is a carefully designed, high-quality book that gathers standout photography, essays and profiles from a given season. These volumes are sold through the Downdays shop and partner retailers, functioning both as collectible objects and as a funding mechanism for future projects. Alongside the books, Downdays releases limited merchandise drops—hoodies, caps and accessories—that reflect its visual identity and help riders show their connection to the brand in lift lines and city streets.
Finally, the events and calendar section functions as a living infrastructure for the community. The event calendar tracks everything from local rail jams to Freeride World Tour stops and World Cup slopestyle contests, while event reports and previews provide context and storytelling around those dates. Together with the news-style “Quick News” hits and gear spotlights, this ecosystem makes Downdays feel less like a static magazine and more like an operating system for freeski information.
Ride feel: who it’s for (terrains & use-cases)
“Riding” Downdays is about how you move through the sport mentally more than how you flex a ski on edge. The platform is built for skiers who see freeskiing as a lifestyle and a culture, not just an occasional holiday activity. If your winter involves lapping the park, checking storm cycles, following the Freeride World Tour, hunting for new films, and maybe even hitting a few street spots with friends, Downdays is squarely aimed at you.
Park and street skiers will find a steady stream of edits, film reviews and scene reports that mirror the kind of content they watch on skipowd.tv’s street and park categories. Articles unpack what crews are doing in places like Finnish rail lines, Austrian snowparks and city spots across Central Europe, giving depth to tricks that might otherwise flash past in a three-minute clip. Freeriders and tourers, meanwhile, benefit from trip reports, avalanche-focused pieces and destination features that blend aesthetic stoke with practical information.
Because Downdays intentionally blurs the lines between sub-disciplines, it suits skiers whose seasons are mixed: a weekend in the park, a trip to a big-mountain venue in Austria, spring touring missions and perhaps a street mission in a hometown city. The tone is inclusive rather than elitist—if you care enough to think about skiing when you’re not actually on snow, you’re the target audience.
Team presence, competitions, and reputation
Instead of a classic “athlete team” built around contracts and logo placement, Downdays operates as a hub for many of the riders and crews that shape European freeski culture. Over the years, it has featured and supported projects from iconic film collectives, competition athletes, national teams and up-and-coming street crews. Coverage ranges from interviews with established pros to scene reports on local events and profiles of riders who are just starting to break through.
The platform has long-standing relationships with major events and partners. It regularly covers Freeride World Tour and FIS World Cup stops, X Games slopestyle and big air, as well as independent events like grassroots rail jams, park camps and creative team gatherings. Its event reporting balances results and rankings with human stories—travel mishaps, changes in weather, behind-the-scenes challenges and the way events shape local scenes.
Among skiers, Downdays has earned a reputation as “the European freeski magazine that never really turned corporate.” Even as it has grown and professionalised its design, production and partnerships, the brand has kept an editorial voice that feels rooted in the community. April Fool’s posts, long-running jokes, deep cuts about past edits and affectionate jabs at industry clichés all contribute to a tone that is serious about skiing, but not self-serious.
Geography and hubs (heritage, testing, venues)
Downdays was born in Innsbruck, a city that sits at the intersection of many of Europe’s most important freeski venues. From that base in the heart of the Alps, the brand quickly developed a pan-European scope. Its Resort Guide and travel stories highlight destinations ranging from glacier parks and Austrian mega-resorts to Swiss freeride strongholds, Italian valleys, Scandinavian street spots and emerging Eastern European areas.
Austria remains a recurring anchor: Downdays has covered multi-resort passes and regions like Ski amadé, produced travel pieces around hotspots such as Absolut Park, and documented the way large resort networks support both park and freeride culture. Switzerland and France are similarly prominent, with regular stories set in places like the Valais, the Arlberg corridor and classic big-mountain zones that many skipowd.tv viewers recognise from their favourite films.
At the same time, the brand consistently looks beyond the obvious. Coverage of Baltic scenes, Eastern European spots and smaller regional hills underscores the idea that freeski culture does not only live in mega-resorts. For riders planning their own trips, Downdays’ geographically broad perspective helps stitch together itineraries that combine high-profile destinations with lesser-known gems, often mirrored in the video choices they watch on skipowd.tv.
Construction, durability, and sustainability
For a media house, “construction” means editorial standards, visual identity and platform architecture. Downdays’ website is structured to keep long-form reading and quick hits side by side: deeply reported features in the Stories section, fast updates in Quick News, and a clear navigation bar that surfaces videos, events, gear reviews and guides with minimal friction. The layout prioritizes legible typography and high-quality imagery, reflecting the print roots of the brand even in digital form.
The Ski Stories yearbooks are built to last in a more literal sense. Printed on quality stock with careful design, they are meant to be kept, revisited and shared rather than thrown away after one season. This focus on durable physical products, combined with a relatively small but curated merchandise line, stands in contrast to mass-produced fast fashion. For a culture that already consumes a lot of digital media, having tangible, long-lived objects helps ground the experience.
On the sustainability side, Downdays’ main contribution is cultural: it encourages skiers to think holistically about the sport, including environmental and social dimensions. Articles often touch on climate, access, diversity and the changing economics of mountain towns. By choosing depth and context over clickbait, and by championing scenes that might otherwise be overlooked, the brand helps build a more resilient and self-aware freeski community—one that is better equipped to navigate the pressures facing winter sports.
How to choose within the lineup
If you are new to Downdays, the best entry point is the homepage and navigation bar. Start with the Videos section if you primarily want a curated selection of edits, movies and episodes that align closely with what you already watch on skipowd.tv. When a clip or crew catches your attention, search their name on Downdays to see if there are related interviews, behind-the-scenes pieces or gear spotlights that give additional context.
For trip planning, head to the Resort Guide and the travel category in Stories. These pages help you compare destinations based on park quality, freeride access, snow reliability and cultural vibe rather than just marketing slogans. Pair that with skipowd.tv’s location pages—such as its in-depth coverage of Austrian venues—and you can build a nuanced view of where to go and what kind of skiing to expect.
If gear decisions are on your mind, the Brand Guide and Gear section will be especially useful. They gather product reviews, spotlights and backgrounders on everything from skis and boots to goggles and protective equipment. While Downdays does run brand partnerships, the editorial voice generally prioritizes clarity and rider relevance over pure hype, making this a strong complement to the sponsor profiles you see on skipowd.tv.
Why riders care
Riders care about Downdays because it feels like a living record of freeski culture rather than just another content feed. When you scroll the site or flip through a Ski Stories book, you see your own version of skiing reflected back: park kids, street crews, big-mountain riders, ski tourers, photographers, filmer collectives and everyday locals all sharing the same stage. That sense of recognition is powerful, especially for European skiers who spent years consuming mostly North American media.
For the skipowd.tv community, Downdays functions as a narrative layer on top of the endless video stream. Where skipowd.tv helps you discover, organize and binge-watch ski footage, Downdays helps you understand the people, places and decisions behind those clips. Together they form a feedback loop: a film discovered on Downdays might lead you to its full version on skipowd.tv; a resort you research on skipowd.tv’s location pages might send you to a Downdays travel story. In that ecosystem, Downdays stands out as a brand dedicated to curating, celebrating and occasionally poking fun at the culture that keeps skiers coming back winter after winter.
