This year snowboarding celebrates – or laments, depending on your point of view – its twentieth anniversary at the Games. Since Nagano 98 it has gone from a petulant and independent outsider to a tame – even willing – participant of the Games that consistently delivers some of the biggest TV audiences.

Despite this superficial success, the Olympics are not without their critics: a friend and passionate snowboarder asked me in 2009 (in a Life Of Brian style) “But what have the Olympics ever done for snowboarding?” Being complicit in snowboarding’s success at the Games, at least in Britain, I was desperate to give him a valid answer… but I couldn’t. Every answer that came into my head – “they get more people interested in snowboarding” or “it means more investment in athletes and competitions outside the Games” – has proved unfounded. Over the last decade the snowboard industry has shrivelled, while its popularity at the Olympics has been at an all-time high.

So let’s take a closer look. Every sport present is controlled by a federation; snowboarding is under the control of FIS (the International Ski Federation). They oversee all the on-snow sports, of which there are six: Nordic, Cross Country (god knows what the difference is between those two), Ski Jumping, Alpine, Freestyle Skiing and Snowboarding. In total, these sports produced 5000 hours of television at the Sochi Olympics in 2014, that could be sent to a maximum of 48 territories around the world.

Snowboarding’s age-old nemesis, Alpine Skiing, was taken in all 48 territories and produced 1374 hours of content: the most of any snow sport. So Alpine Skiing, the cornerstone of FIS’s business and most traditional discipline, had by far the best chance to smoke the competition when it came to viewing figures, right? They managed a peak audience of 77M. ‘Is that any good?’ you ask. Well, it was the fourth best of the on-snow disciplines. Freestyle Skiing was third with 78M, Ski Jumping was second with 90M, and first? Snowboarding, with 92M.

This is huge. In very simple terms it means that snowboarding is FIS’s most valuable commodity at the Olympics. The IOC is bound by sponsors’ demands to deliver young audiences, and this kind of pulling power – with exactly the right demographic – puts snowboarding at the top of the pile. And, encouragingly, the deeper we delve into the figures, the more positive it becomes.

“We are the most watched event of all the snow disciplines”

Nevertheless, having attended the Ski World Championships in St Moritz last year, it was very clear that the heritage and appeal of Alpine Skiing – especially to its core markets of Scandinavia and the Alpine nations – means that we shouldn’t get our hopes up. I know this because I also travelled to the Freestyle World Champs in Sierra Nevada, and in comparison they felt like a booby prize; an event that resorts get strong-armed into hosting in return for a more prestigious event. It’s an event that FIS heads obviously loathe lest they get cornered by unhappy athletes who have the temerity to complain because they’ve been forced to ride a dangerous course.

So what can we do? Well, anyone who has read my thoughts on the Dream Tour knows what I think the long term solution is, but right now snowboarding has little to no outside investment. The chances of raising $2M to start a brand new tour are, in the short term at least, as likely as finding a sanitary toilet in Luton train station.

“Why don’t we have a little lick of the devil’s penis? Why don’t we try and work with FIS?”

Instead we need to look at what we actually have in front of us: a functioning freestyle world tour organised by FIS. Yes, the WST still exists, but the long-running battle for control of sanctioned freestyle competition is over, and FIS are holding all the cards. Air + Style is now being integrated to FIS Big Air Tour and will almost certainly offer naming rights, while the Laax Open is now a part of the World Cup, which leaves a lonely trio outside the fold. The two big commercials – X Games and The Dew Tour – are self-interested and self-sustaining TV events that are far from global, and then there’s the proud daddy, the US Open, which I hope will exist for as long as Burton do. However over the last decade Burton’s ‘Open Series’ has shrunk from a world tour to a solitary pillar of the snowboard community.

How does this bring us back to whether or not something positive can come from snowboarding being a part of the Olympics? Well, the viewing figures prove that we are one of the most consistently popular and engaging snow sports at the Games, which gives us some power. But not in a ‘let’s wield this power like a flaming torch and boycott the Games’ way – we’ve tried that. In some respects it has been noble, but most of the time it is naive, embarrassing and has never worked… So I have a suggestion.

Why don’t we have a little lick of the devil’s penis? Why don’t we try and work with FIS? It doesn’t have to be a war. This could be our equivalent of the cheesy scene in 80s brat pack movies where the two main characters finally realise that fighting each other is such a waste of energy, and that together they’re more than the sum of their parts.

“Core brands sponsoring the FIS World Cup would give us the best riders competing in a coherent tour that has a decent TV product”

Look around and you’ll see that all of the best course builders, judges and technical directors have already taken the plunge and are happily working for both the independent events and FIS. Whether it’s the US Open or the FIS Freestyle World Champs, the creativity of the course and standard of judging are exactly the same. The credibility and safety of the riders is no longer an issue, but if you go to the US Open you’ll be wading through bro-downs and high fives as the industry celebrates its favourite event; go to the FIS World Champs and you won’t see a single person who is not directly responsible for an athlete or the event. There are no team managers, photographers, filmers, no magazine editors and definitely no reprobates getting drunk and poaching the pipe. You will, however, find many people who don’t have a clue about the sport, but they are desperate to learn and crave the acceptance of our industry.

I genuinely believe that with the support and guidance of the industry they would be able to create events we could all enjoy. Core snowboard brands sponsoring the World Cup would, short term, give us the best riders competing at the highest level, in a coherent tour that has a decent TV product.

This is not a fashionable thing to say – and I will undoubtedly get a lot of shit for it – but ask yourself: why as an industry don’t we support FIS? Are we knowingly shooting ourselves in the foot when it comes to publicity? When put in front of the biggest TV audiences in the world we are killing it, yet the snowboard industry refuses to get behind contest riding in this incarnation.

I know it will be seen as the ultimate form of treachery, and whichever brand goes first will be seen as Judas, but the bottom line is the bottom line: it’s good business. If the industry put its full weight behind the World Cup, rather than scorning it, then we could help shape these events into a really strong, credible world tour. And it’s a fact that this would only be a good thing for an industry that is, let’s face it, on its knees right now and needs to try something different. Why not help support the FIS world tour and tap into the vast audience the Games reach in between the Olympic cycles?

I’m ready for the torrent of unimaginative abuse, but I really hope there are people out there who’d like to debate this seriously, because I truly believe this is our best chance to make the Olympics work for snowboarding. Let’s start the conversation.

Ed Leigh heads the snowboard commentary at the Olympic Games for the BBC.