PASTRANA MAKES SEVERAL million dollars a year flipping motorcycles instead of hamburgers, and for that he can thank Astephen, a regular guy who never went to college yet ended up becoming the most powerful agent in the increasingly important world of alternative sports. In the last decade, Astephen has turned the Familie into the nerve center of a marketing revolution. With the help of his 18 employees, he has made a big business out of the once unknown stars of skateboarding, freestyle BMX riding, snowboarding, and motocross.

According to Marketing Evaluations Inc., which produces the Q Scores survey, a measure of public figures' "familiarity and appeal," skater Tony Hawk, 37, and motocross legend Jeremy McGrath, 34, are two of the top ten most recognizable athletes in the world among 12-to- 24-year-olds, the demographic advertisers chase the hardest. This recognition has paved the way for other action-sports stars to grab the limelight and helps explain why, in 2004, Dave Mirra, 31, a BMX rider and Astephen's marquee client, replaced freestyle skier Jonny Moseley as the host of MTV's Real World/Road Rules Challenge. Other examples include Carey Hart, who has a TV show, Inked, that revolves around the Las Vegas tattoo parlor he owns and operates, and pro skater Bam Margera, 25, the star of MTV's Viva La Bam.

The games these guys play now amount to a multi-billion-dollar industry, a long way from the poorer days of 1998, when Astephen founded the Familie in his Carlsbad garage. Back then, only pro athletes, Olympic gold medalists who could reap millions every four years, and the rare fringe breakout star like then six-time surfing world champ Kelly Slater could hope to attract traditional sports agents—those Armani-clad, cell-phone-wielding obsessives who roam the halls of the big three sports agencies: Washington, D.C.–based SFX Sports Group; International Management Group (IMG), headquartered in New York and Cleveland; and Octagon, with offices in Los Angeles, D.C., and Portland, Maine.

When Astephen started, even current stars like Hawk, whose licensing empire of skateboards, clothes, shoes, and video games reportedly earns him $9 million a year, and who's now repped by Hollywood's powerhouse Creative Artists Agency, had yet to go big. What Astephen recognized, ahead of almost everyone else, was that there was money to be made representing athletes who weren't as famous as Hawk, the working-class pros skating and riding under the radar. Astephen instinctively knew that some of them, like Mirra, would turn into high-grossing cultural phenoms.

But unless you skate, snowboard, ride BMX, or surf, don't bother calling Astephen. He has no time for kayakers, rock climbers, or mountain bikers. It's not that those athletes can't make money, he says; it's that he can't make them enough money for his commission—anywhere from 5 to 20 percent—to be worth his while. According to Astephen, companies like Kraft aren't looking to sell to America's kayakers and mountain bikers, fans of expensive sports pursued by relatively few kids. They want skateboarding, which, by contrast, is cheap, can be done anywhere there's pavement, and is one of the fastest-growing pursuits in America, with more than 11.5 million (mostly teenage) participants.

Astephen has no problem, however, expanding into motocross, which is certainly in his best financial interests. The sport's top athletes, like Pastrana and Reed, earn millions in prize money and motorcycle-manufacturer sponsorships, plus millions more from deals for clothing lines, video games, and product endorsements.

In the skate, surf, and BMX worlds, there are only a few megastars—like Hawk, Slater, and Mirra—who clear multiple millions in income. Below this level, the scale slides down to the other top three or four competitors in each sport, who still may earn in excess of $1 million apiece each year. The next dozen make money in the $250,000 range—roughly equivalent to the minimum salary for an NFL rookie. These fat paychecks come from contracts with, to name a few, Slim Jim, T-Mobile, Campbell's, Mountain Dew, Target, AT&T, Disney, Nestlé, Oxy, Powerade, SoBe, and Kraft.

Such deals bring in millions of dollars a year for the Familie (or WMG, as Astephen has taken to calling it post-sale), and the lure of that cash has led to the creation of new, competing agencies as the older firms scramble for a cut—Octagon and IMG both now have action-sports divisions, with the former gaining quickly on WMG. It remains to be seen whether this frenzied momentum can continue, but one thing's for sure: The glory days are here. When Astephen's athletes hit it big, the first thing he advises is that they "bank a few million." With that, he says, "they'll never have to work again."