The 2000s saw plenty of major ski resort buyout deals, much of which has led to the consolidation of resort ownership that we see today. But many of the highest profile sales didn’t come from major corporations pushing out family ownership. Instead these early 2000s acquisitions came from the disintegration of existing major ski corporations like the American Skiing Company. PeakRankings took a look at some of these major acquisitions that came from the death of ASC and other large organizations.
As explained in the video, some of the biggest ski resort sales of the early 2000s occurred because of the failure of companies like ASC. POWDR acquired Killington and Pico because of ASC, and Peak Resorts’ purchased Mount Snow and Attitash under the same logic. In 2002, Vail Resorts’ was able to acquire Heavenly in this context.
In 2007, Intrawest, another former major mountain resort developer and operator, purchased Steamboat from ASC but sold Copper Mountain to POWDR in 2009 to offload debt. The concept of family resort ownership did see some pressure in the early 200s, but much of the major consolidation came not because companies were looking to aggressively expand but because they got great deals on major mountains.
According to New England Ski History, American Skiing Company at one point owned 13 total resorts throughout its existence, including Attitash, Cranmore, Haystack, Killington, Mt. Snow, Pico, Sugarbush, Sugarloaf, Sunday River, Waterville Valley, Canyons (now part of Park City), Heavenly, and Steamboat.
