“The pricing of the Epic Pass and the Company’s lift tickets is not a peripheral concern; it is the core of Vail’s business,” Peterson said in the lawsuit. “These wrongs resulted in significant damages to Vail’s reputation, goodwill, and standing in the business community, as well as exposing the company to two federal antitrust class actions seeking treble damages.”
A coalition of skiers has filed a lawsuit against four of Colorado’s largest resorts, claiming that operators violated federal antitrust statutes by conspiring to inflate rates on some of the country’s busiest hills.
According to The Colorado Sun, the lawsuit was filed earlier this month in a Colorado-based federal court. It names following resort operators as defendants: Vail Resorts, Alterra Mountain Co., Boyne Resorts, and Powdr. These four companies, attorneys say, deliberately chose to share confidential, non-public information for the explicit purpose of setting “artificially high” prices for skiing and to “avoid” having to “meaningfully compete with each other.”
The lawsuit, notes the Sun, seeks class-actions tatus for the thousands of customers who pay for lift tickets, season passes, and ski lessons at the defendant resorts.
Several of the defendants named in the lawsuit are already facing similar claims.
Earlier this week, on Monday, Vail shareholder Gary Peterson filed a lawsuit making a similar series of claims: that Vail exchanges pricing and financial information with its competitors, and has done so since at least 2020. Peterson’s lawsuit takes specific issue with Vail’s “Epic Pass,” which gives skiers access to resorts across the country.
To coerce visitors into purchasing its Epic passes, which retail for more than $1,000 per season, Vail allegedly increased the price of single-day lift tickets to “economically irrational” extremes, with peak holiday-season tickets sometimes costing as much as $385.
“The pricing of the Epic Pass and the Company’s lift tickets is not a peripheral concern; it is the core of Vail’s business,” Peterson said in the lawsuit. “These wrongs resulted in significant damages to Vail’s reputation, goodwill, and standing in the business community, as well as exposing the company to two federal antitrust class actions seeking treble damages.”
Peterson claims that the practice has hurt Vail’s own shareholders, who allegedly exposed investors to significant financial risk and reputational damages by failing to inform them about the reality behind the company’s most significant source of revenue.
The board members at Vail, Peterson says, “either knew that Vail was violating the antitrust laws and its one vote and failed to halt the conduct, or consciously disregarded the red flags it generated, including the participation of the company’s senior leadership in the trade association gatherings and information exchange at the center of the scheme.”
A Vail spokesperson told the Colorado Sun that, while the company does not comment on pending litigation, it believes that Peterson’s claims are without merit.
“We believe that the [Peterson] claims are without merit and will defend the company and our board of directors vigorously,” Vail said.
Sources
4 largest ski resort companies are a “cartel” scheming to raise prices, Colorado lawsuit alleges
Shareholder turns on Vail ski resorts in blistering price fixing lawsuit as Epic Pass costs explode
