DENVER–Three skiers–two from Colorado and another from Minnesota–filed a proposed class-action lawsuit in Denver federal court last week accusing the four companies that dominate American skiing of working together, rather than against each other, to jack up prices.
The suit, Green et al. v. Vail Resorts Inc. et al., names Broomfield-based Vail Resorts alongside Alterra Mountain Company, Boyne Resorts, and Powdr Corp., plus two industry organizations plaintiffs say functioned as the conduit for the alleged scheme: the National Ski Areas Association and Boulder research firm RRC Associates.
The 84-page complaint claims the companies exchanged confidential data on revenue, costs, and skier visits through NSAA-commissioned reports and industry gatherings, in what plaintiffs call a coordinated price-setting effort. The suit cites specific numbers: the Ikon Pass climbing from $949 in 2019-20 to $1,399 for the coming season, and the Epic Pass rising from $939 to $1,089 (with Epic dropping to $783 during a pandemic-era reset for 2021-22) over a similar span. Single-day lift tickets at flagship resorts such as Vail, Steamboat, Park City, and Big Sky are alleged to have jumped more than 55%.
The complaint doesn’t stop at data-sharing through the trade group. It also points to Aspenware, an e-commerce and dynamic-pricing platform partly owned by Alterra and also used by Boyne and Powdr. Plaintiffs argue running competitors’ pricing through a shared software platform made coordination easier to facilitate and harder to detect.
Vail doesn’t use Aspenware, but the suit claims its in-house pricing system produced essentially the same result.
This is the second time this year Vail and Alterra have been dragged into court over pass pricing. In March, a separate suit — Goloja v. Vail Resorts — accused the two ski companies of bundling day-ticket and pass pricing to strong-arm skiers into buying either Epic or Ikon passes.
Both Vail and Alterra have denied wrongdoing in that case and have a motion to dismiss the lawsuit awaiting a ruling.
The new complaint is much broader in scope, dragging in two additional ski operators and the industry’s own trade association. The complaint also revives a contentious argument around Colorado’s ski business: that consolidation, not snowfall or labor costs, is what’s actually driving the eye-popping price of lift tickets. Plaintiffs point to a decade of what they call “stealth acquisitions” of ski areas, both large and small, claiming it leaves skiers with the illusion of choice while actually handing pricing power to a select group of boardrooms.
The full complaint is available here.
