On June 28th, 1999, Tony Hawk made history. He completed a 900-degree rotation on a skateboard. The hype surrounding this event was aligned with ESPN Xgame's movement of bringing skateboarding into the lime-light of the Xgames and getting rollerbalding out. That same year they halved the number of blading events, leaving only vert and street (which are both aggressive stunt events).
Xgames was looking to push sports which were decidedly non-recreational and unapproachable by older enthusiasts and at the same time was more economically approachable. You're more likely to find a suburban mom on rollerblades than a skateboard. This was to craft the image of skateboarding as a separate and distinct youth oriented activity which could not be appropriated by an older market.
Regarding the costs, a new set of good blades can run you $300+ where a new good skateboard will run you $100. Maintenance for an actively used board is about $40/yr for a board where actively used aggressive blades will run you $100+/yr in parts. Add to that; blades have to be purchased every year for a growing kid, where a skateboard is for the most part, the same size as the kid grows.
If you're ESPN you want as many viewers and enthusiasts as possible for the largest addressable market. Pushing skate boarding as your lead sport made the most sense for the mass market of america, especially post .com crash.
Around that same time period a massive new generation of skate boarders started up who were all 10-18 y/o. As teenagers do, they looked for any and every way they could distance themselves from anybody who wasn't down with what they were down with (recall middle school classic arguments such as "You're a basser, I'm a metal head, you suck!"). During this time the joke "Do you know what's the hardest thing about rollerbalding? Punchline: Telling your parents you're gay!" became full force and permeated every skate park in the US. Animosity between boards and bladers (well lets be honest, between boarders and anybody else in a skate park that wasn't on a board) reached it's height in the early naughts and by 2004 rollerblading was kicked out of the Xgames entirely and went "underground."
In the subsequent years, skate boarding has gone on to become the most dominate extreme sport in the world in terms of overall market cap and salaries for pro athlese.
Meanwhile the best rollerbladers in the world such as Richie Eisler can barely scrape together livings. These guys go all fucking out busting their asses doing tricks that are amazing and get much of nothing in the way of compensation for their skills.
For those so inclined there is an hour long documentary called Barely Dead which covers some of the things I've mentioned above.
Note: Everything I've mentioned here is relative to the North American market. Blading is still generally ok in EU and Asia. Nowhere near as popular as the 90's in the US, but it is a welcomed part of extreme sports exhibitions and compositions in other continents besides N. America.
Also note the Nitro Circus features two pro rollerbladers and treats them with respect. One of their core features is the variety of wheeled athletes who can ride their mega ramp and blading fits in well there. I'm happy that the Nitro Circus is giving blading a chance to shine again.
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