By Jenna Greene

Summer has just begun, and for ski fanatics that means only one thing: time to decide whether to buy next season's lift pass.

Whether that choice reflects consumer preference or coercion is now before a federal judge in an antitrust lawsuit against Vail Resorts and Alterra Mountain Co.

The two companies have emerged in recent years as the dominant forces in North American skiing, scooping up marquee resorts from Vermont to California and beyond.

Their success is driven in part by all-access season passes — the Epic and Ikon — that bundle dozens of destinations into a single product, reshaping how skiers experience the sport and fueling persistent complaints about rising prices and crowded slopes.

But does that model cross the line into an antitrust violation?

Earlier this year, four skiers filed a proposed class action in Colorado federal court, arguing that the companies are using their size and reach to drive up costs and suppress competition.

Now in motions filed earlier this month, the resort operators are urging the court to throw the case out. The Epic and Ikon passes, they argue, are simply flexible, discounted products in a “fiercely” competitive industry, where more than 11 million people ski or snowboard at nearly 800 resorts across the United States and Canada each year.

The clash highlights a broader question that extends well beyond skiing: When does a popular subscription model become an antitrust problem — and when is it simply competition doing what it is supposed to do?

The two Colorado-based companies are not accused of conspiring to raise prices. Instead, the plaintiffs in their allege similar — but independent — conduct by each company to stifle competition. (In a footnote, Alterra said the claims should have been filed separately, and that it would seek to split the case if it proceeds to trial.)

A spokesperson for Vail, which is publicly traded and owns 42 resorts worldwide, including Park City, Breckenridge and Whistler Blackcomb, declined to comment beyond the company’s court filings. Alterra, which is privately held and owns 16 ski areas, among them Mammoth Mountain, Palisades Tahoe and Steamboat, said it does not comment on active litigation.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs at DiCello Levitt; Berger Montague; and Salahi did not respond to requests for comment.

In their March complaint, the plaintiffs advance a nuanced antitrust theory built around the growing dominance of “mega” season passes.

As a kid in the 1980s obsessed with skiing, even on Wisconsin’s icy hills, I thought of season passes as the height of luxury – something for trust fund babies or European nobility.

Not anymore. According to trade publication Ski Area Management, season pass holders accounted for 49% of skier visits in the 2025-2026 season.

Vail launched its Epic pass in 2008, with Alterra debuting its Ikon product 10 years later. Purchased in advance, the passes help the companies – whose business is heavily dependent on snowfall — hedge against seasonal risk.

In exchange, skiers and snowboarders get broad, season-long access to the slopes for about $1,100 to $1,450.

But the plaintiffs see a darker side to the popular offering. They allege that to push customers into buying bundled access to multiple resorts, Vail and Alterra have “exorbitantly” raised the price of individual lift tickets, which can top $300.

Skiers are “being forced into buying a Mega Pass, which is itself maximally (over)- priced” because it looks like a good deal compared to a single-day ticket, the complaint says.

The anti‑competitive effects extend to smaller “regional” resorts that allegedly rely on local skiers seeking weekend or day trips, the plaintiffs say. Some of those mountains are included in the mega‑pass networks; others are not.

In antitrust terms, the plaintiffs say, this amounts to “tying” — using control over the top-tier mountains to steer demand across other ski areas and crowd out independent resorts, in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Colorado Antitrust Act.

In separate motions to dismiss filed on June 18, both Vail and Alterra argue that the complaint falls flat. Vail and its lawyers from Arnold & Porter assert that the company is selling the same product across all markets — the right to ride a resort’s lifts and use its terrain.

Guests are free to buy a single-day lift ticket for a specific resort, a limited multi-day pass or a full-access season pass, Vail says – with no requirement to buy any “tied” product or penalty for skiing outside its pass ecosystem.

Vail contrasts this to a classic example of an unlawful tie, when the U.S. Supreme Court in 1947 said the manufacturer of a patented salt-processing machine (the tying product) could not require its customers to use the manufacturer’s unpatented salt (the tied product).

“Forcing a customer to buy your salt in order to lease the machine is a tie. Offering a better price to guests who buy an advance-commitment season pass is not,” Vail lawyers wrote.

At most, Vail says, customers who bought season passes are inclined to take advantage of their “sunk costs” by skiing at the places that are included in the bundle. But that’s not antitrust violation – it’s consumer choice, the company argues.

Alterra and its lawyers from Wheeler Trigg O’Donnell stress that tying requires two separate products and two distinct product markets. Attempting to divide ski areas into “destination” and “regional” categories that supposedly don’t vie for the same customers defies common sense, they say.

By this logic, Keystone, a “destination” resort in Colorado, competes head-on with Killington, 2,000 miles away in Vermont — but not with Arapahoe Basin, a “regional” resort six miles down the road, Alterra says.

As for the pricey lift tickets, they say the plaintiffs' own complaint suggests there’s a logical explanation — the “high demand for lift access” at top ski areas.

In the end, the case may turn on whether the industry is responding to that demand — or shaping it in a way that unlawfully limits competition.