Vail Resorts Hires Defence Bankers as Billionaire Pushes to Buy Park City Mountain Resort

Vail Resorts has hired takeover-defence bankers as a billionaire's campaign to buy Park City Mountain Resort turns up the heat.

According to a Semafor report published on 18 June, Vail Resorts is working with mergers and acquisitions advisers to assess its vulnerabilities - from labour disputes and climate exposure to the sustained pressure campaign of Matthew Prince, the Cloudflare CEO and billionaire who has been publicly pushing Vail to sell him Park City Mountain Resort.

No activist investor has yet made a formal move on the company. But the engagement of defence bankers signals that Vail's board is taking the threat seriously enough to prepare.

Who is Matthew Prince and what does he want?

Prince, 50, grew up in Park City and worked as a ski instructor there in the mid-1990s before building Cloudflare into one of the world's largest internet infrastructure companies. He is now the wealthiest person in Utah. His interest in Park City Mountain Resort is not new - he first began pushing for a sale last year - but his public statements have become increasingly pointed.

In an interview with The Colorado Sun in early June, Prince said he is prepared to invest $500 million in Park City, focused on snowmaking, lift upgrades and profit-sharing with employees. He is also the owner of the Park City Town Lift plaza at the base of the resort, which includes the land beneath the Town Lift that connects to Main Street.

His argument is not sentimental - it is financial. He pointed to Vail Resorts' stock price, which sits near its 2016 level and is down more than 60% from its 2021 peak. His view is that Vail's portfolio of 42 ski areas across the US, Canada, Austria and Australia is worth substantially more than the company's current market capitalisation, and that shareholders will eventually force a reckoning.

"At some point shareholders are going to say you know what, you don't get to be a capital allocator anymore," Prince told The Colorado Sun.

The asset-light argument

Prince's broader pitch is a structural one. He believes Vail should shift to an asset-light franchise model - retaining the Epic Pass business while selling off its owned resorts to operators who would then pay to access the pass network. Under that model, Vail would function as a pass aggregator rather than a resort owner, letting individual communities and operators invest in and differentiate their own mountains.

He cited Deer Valley - owned by Alterra Mountain Co. and adjacent to Park City - as the kind of independently operated resort he admires, noting that under different ownership, a gondola connection between Park City, Deer Valley, Brighton, Solitude, Alta and Snowbird could create one of the largest contiguous ski areas in the world.

Vail's CEO Rob Katz has rejected that framing directly. "I'm not necessarily a fan of the asset light model, at least not for our company and in terms of where we're trying to go," Katz told Semafor in May. He has also pushed back specifically on the Park City sale, telling The Colorado Sun: "I don't think it makes sense."

Why the timing matters

Prince's campaign is landing at a vulnerable moment for Vail Resorts. The company's most recent quarterly results, released on 8 June, showed skier visits down 15.5% for the quarter and net income down over 19%, driven largely by historically poor snowpack across the Rockies and Lake Tahoe. Forward-looking pass sales for 2026-27 are already tracking approximately 10% lower in units - the steepest decline since the Epic Pass launched nearly two decades ago.

Compounding the financial pressure is a lingering reputational issue. A ski patroller strike at Park City during the 2025 holiday season - later acknowledged by Vail as poorly handled - generated significant negative attention, and labour relations remain a stated concern in the company's current strategic review.

Prince told The Colorado Sun that named activist investors including Third Point's Dan Loeb and Land & Buildings' Jon Litt - both of whom ski - have been in contact with him. Semafor confirmed that Vail's advisory conversations have specifically included discussion of Prince's interest.

Katz was brought back as CEO in May 2025, replacing his own hand-picked successor, and has been working to address customer service complaints - particularly around lift queue management and staffing. His public position on Prince remains measured. "I think it's great to see the passion and enthusiasm that he has for us and for Park City," Katz told Semafor. "We have a lot of very wealthy guests and community members in a lot of our communities and they have strong feelings and they have views. And I think all of those are important for us to take in."

What happens next is unclear. But Vail Resorts now has bankers in the room - and the story is unlikely to go quiet before next season.