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no edge

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Does anyone know how the profits are split between resorts participating in Ikon or Epic. First aspect would be the unused portion of the money collected. Second when skiers visit a resort do they receive a set rate for the person who skis that day. Seems impossible to fairly split up the funds.

It's probably quite simple but can figure out how it would work?
 
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Green08

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Ikon would be pretty hard to find out. They are privately held. Epic might have some kind of formula that Vail Resorts makes public during or related to earnings calls.

Telluride did someinterviews last year on cable news that spoke about how they benefit as a partner resort.

I think at the end of the day it comes down to skied visits, profits locally, and how necessary capital expenditures are needed to just keep things running.
 

Guy in Shorts

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Billionaire family vs Publicly held company. I'll take family money as my choice for ownership.
 

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Billionaire family vs Publicly held company. I'll take family money as my choice for ownership.
Alterra is indeed private. It is mostly private equity money, including KSL Capital Partners, funded by dozens of wealthy individuals or institutions who invest with KSL so KSL can then make investments in leisure/travel/hospitality. It’s not by any means the money of just one family. The Crown family is the main individual investor in Alterra. They made their fortune in construction (largely aided by deferring taxes and borrowing money). They then merged with General Dynamics, of which they still own about 10%. They invested in Alterra alongside KSL through their investment firm, Henry Crown & Co., an investment group of various investors aside from the Crown family, that has investments in banking, transportation, oil, furniture and of course ski resorts.

Vail is indeed public, with much of it owned by pension funds and mutual funds with people’s money/savings. It’s largest shareholder, T Rowe Price, is where many people have their 401k plan or investments and where many public and private pension funds invest some of their money for people’s retirement funds.
 
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PinnacleJim

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Ikon would be pretty hard to find out. They are privately held. Epic might have some kind of formula that Vail Resorts makes public during or related to earnings calls.

Telluride did someinterviews last year on cable news that spoke about how they benefit as a partner resort.

I think at the end of the day it comes down to skied visits, profits locally, and how necessary capital expenditures are needed to just keep things running.
 

PinnacleJim

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Probably a bit easier for the owned resorts vs the partner resorts. The owned resorts will get an operating budget and then funds for capital projects. The partners will just get funds back from Epic or Ikon based on usage of the pass at their resort. Not clear what those formulas are.
 

Green08

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Billionaire family vs Publicly held company. I'll take family money as my choice for ownership.
It can really go either way.

Billion dollar family wealth with no accountability can produce a system that just milks profits and cares little about the mountain itself. Under good ownership obviously profits can take a back seat to quality.

Publically owner has a responsibility and accountability to share holders. They must maintain profitability and a quality that produces profitability. Major income profits can’t just go to line trust funds quite as easily. Reinvestment becomes a more direct and necessary use of some profits.

I think the quality of ownership and not the structure that matters
 

Scruffy

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It can really go either way.

Billion dollar family wealth with no accountability can produce a system that just milks profits and cares little about the mountain itself. Under good ownership obviously profits can take a back seat to quality.

Publically owner has a responsibility and accountability to share holders. They must maintain profitability and a quality that produces profitability. Major income profits can’t just go to line trust funds quite as easily. Reinvestment becomes a more direct and necessary use of some profits.

I think the quality of ownership and not the structure that matters

Some publicly owned companies lose sight one for the other.
 
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So the money comes into a pot. Each skier visit yields an amount paid by Icon. Ski resorts that don't get any skier visits get nothing or a small amount. Meanwhile the money left over goes to ICON or pays out as a dividend to some of the mountains or maybe all. Someone tries to keep track??
 

Green08

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So the money comes into a pot. Each skier visit yields an amount paid by Icon. Ski resorts that don't get any skier visits get nothing or a small amount. Meanwhile the money left over goes to ICON or pays out as a dividend to some of the mountains or maybe all. Someone tries to keep track??
I have heard from interviews from guys on the new Indy Pass that they get a payment for every use up to a max. But they also had to contribute towards advertising. (Magic Mtn was the interview I believe)

They Indy Pass probably is more closely compared to mountain collective.

ABasin previously was getting a payment for every visit. It was low, but the volume seemed to be enough to pay for BMX, BML, and the Beavers over time.
 

raytseng

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So the money comes into a pot. Each skier visit yields an amount paid by Icon. Ski resorts that don't get any skier visits get nothing or a small amount. Meanwhile the money left over goes to ICON or pays out as a dividend to some of the mountains or maybe all. Someone tries to keep track??
My guesses:
Doesn't work that way, there's no pot. This accounting is NOT like a family's monthly budget, where you take income that directly pays for the expenses of the month. If you must use a personal finance analogy, i's is more of a advanced macro accounting with multiyear goals and lifetime goals factored in where you can use debt and loans and other big things like having a child, retirement, mortgage, college, death and estate planning.

For owned parts of the company every component of every resort tries to hit particular targets, if they do better or worse, it isn't divied up from the sales, it's just factored into next years' budgets.

The real "pot" is ALL the money, which includes money management of the corporate debt, lines of credit, and bonds and so on to buffer everything. The pass and lift ticket money is just one source of revenue (along with all the other revenue streams) that feeds into that big pot.
The business units can analyze all the numbers and decide as a whole what the entire strategy is for everything, which might involve losing some money in the short term.

In general, remember that whole concept of the multi-resort and season pass instead of independent resorts and daypass business model is to hedge against weather where one area might do poorly for a season; and another does well. It smooth out feast and famine for some consistency. As a consequence, none of these plans that depend solely on 1 year results or single resort results; the whole point is the winning resorts will support the ones that got skunked and vice versa. You don't necessarily get your slice of the pie just because you did super well 1 year.


For the partner resorts, I bet each deal is separate and unique. There's still a countable number of resorts , so each deal probably is custom fashioned.
A premier resort may get paid a bunch, money back. Perhaps on the flip side a feeder resort might have to pay in to get in on the pass.
They probably do have a general framework. and I expect it would have some parameters of payout based on usage and per pass with a cap as mentioned above.

There may also be some minimums of payments a fixed slice of the pie or other guarantees to satisfy whatever issues and concerns are needed (same explanation as above with multiresort season-pass multiyear model).
 
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DanoT

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The slice of the Ikon or Epic pass revenue for each partner or associate resort could be quite small with the real perk for the resort being increased revenue from room rental, food & beverage sales, and all the other resort services and products for sale.

Only Banff and Revelestoke in western Canada are part of Ikon and only Whistler is Epic. Whistler has 62k beds and winter is the tourist off season for both Banff and Revy, so I suspect that limited accommodation (partly due to limited water in some cases) is what is keeping Ikon and Epic out the rest of B.C. That and most of the B.C. resorts are doing fine as independents with lots of recent infrastructure improvements and expansion.
 
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It would be interesting to see what's in it or not for each resort. The decision to clutter up the mountain with a marketing scheme like this is a bit crazy. But if one could see the bottom line for the various resorts it probably would make sense. Many Icon skiers underutilize their pass. People in the East who spend $900 for the Stratton pass could easily just ski at that mountain only for the whole season. But that pass comes with 7 plus 7, at Killington and Sugarbush, plus a huge selection out West. Lots of people can't go out West. So if they were to ski 4 days at each Bush/Kton estimating the value at 50% or easier... $50. That's $900 for the Icon less an estimate of $450 for Stratton regular pass less the $400 for the skiing at Bush/Kton. Not much left for the Corporate Icon and marginal benefit for the skier.

Could it simply be about the skiers that don't take full advantage of the pass. I guess that's always going to be a factor with passes.
 

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The strange one is Copper. Full access on Ikon, but owned by POWDR. I have a Killington pass which is also owned by POWDR. I get no deal to ski at Copper or any other POWDR resort. I doubt many Denver area skiers buy a Copper pass versus an Ikon pass. Most of Coppers pass revenue has to come from Ikon.
 

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It was just pointed out to me that in my post #12 above, I forgot that Resorts of the Canadian Rockies which owns Kicking Horse, Kimberly, and Fernie are part of Epic so the Season Pass Wars have actually engulfed B.C. to a greater extent than I previously stated.

Fernie and KH skiers are mostly day or weekend skiers from Calgary and always have been (same goes for Banff skiers mostly from Calgary). One could say that in Calgary which has Canada's highest per capita number of skiers, there is a Ikon vs Epic battle going on.

It was announced in Dec 2019 that POWDR bought Silver Star near Vernon, B.C.

Something that was likely worked out prior to Silver Star's sale was a new for the 2019-20 season: a 2 day free skiing reciprocal deal between SS and Sun Peaks. The two mountains are about 2+ hours apart so one could do 2 separate visits but with the high cost of gas, might as well stay overnight and ski 2 consecutive days. I have met several who have done so.
 

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Fernie and KH skiers are mostly day or weekend skiers from Calgary and always have been (same goes for Banff skiers mostly from Calgary). One could say that in Calgary which has Canada's highest per capita number of skiers, there is a Ikon vs Epic battle going on.

Unfortunately people who have a Sunshine or Louise pass do not get any IKON reciprocals. These are only available for Ski Big 3 passes, which aren't much of a deal, and are not too popular with Calgarians. They are fairly popular with Banff residents though. RCR pass holders get reciprocals at resorts OWNED by epic (50% off window, i think), but not affiliated resorts, like Telluride.

I have the RCR Super pass, which includes the RCR resorts, plus Lake Louise. I don't get any Epic or IKON benefits.

With Epic or IKON passes, you get 7 days at RCR or Ski Big 3, which isn't worth the price of the pass on its own.
 

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The strange one is Copper. Full access on Ikon, but owned by POWDR. I have a Killington pass which is also owned by POWDR. I get no deal to ski at Copper or any other POWDR resort. I doubt many Denver area skiers buy a Copper pass versus an Ikon pass. Most of Coppers pass revenue has to come from Ikon.

My guess is that Ikon would have a hard time being competitive in the front range market without at least 1 Summit County resort as full access. Eldora is also full access and owned by Powdr. Eldora would probably like to be limited to the 5/7 days given the parking issues there.
 

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Telluride did someinterviews last year on cable news that spoke about how they benefit as a partner resort.
One of those interviews: https://www.cnbc.com/video/2018/12/...ld-know-before-picking-a-season-ski-pass.html
Jensen's saying Telluride gets ~$118 per skier day from Epic. Folks have rightly pointed out that we shouldn't try to assume too much from that single comment in an interview, and Telluride's likely paying something back to Vail when it's passholders ski Vail properties for half price... but at least it gives a rough idea of a likely per-visit ceiling.
Also, as Jensen points out, plenty of partner mountains are volume plays... A-basin, Copper, Eldora for instance likely get less per visit, but have much higher visitation.
 

PinnacleJim

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My guess is that Ikon would have a hard time being competitive in the front range market without at least 1 Summit County resort as full access. Eldora is also full access and owned by Powdr. Eldora would probably like to be limited to the 5/7 days given the parking issues there.
Agree. And certainly a holdover from the old Rocky Mountain Super Pass. But what bugs me is a holder of a full Killington pass gets zip at other POWDR resorts but a Stratton skier with an Ikon pass gets unlimited access. Many Killington skiers know have some flavor of Epic pass. Me included.
 

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Agree. And certainly a holdover from the old Rocky Mountain Super Pass. But what bugs me is a holder of a full Killington pass gets zip at other POWDR resorts but a Stratton skier with an Ikon pass gets unlimited access. Many Killington skiers know have some flavor of Epic pass. Me included.
Yeah I have to agree the Killington setup for Powdr is odd.
Boyne gives full pass holders 3 days at Big Sky.
Why can’t a full Killington season pass not include 3 days at Copper? Maybe they fear some kind over crowding issue?
Bachelor is Powdr’s other oddity. They own it. But they have kept it off other pass products. Even if a Kton pass included 3 days at Bachelor, then there would be some reasoning at work.

Real completion could ensue if Boyne purchased Powdr. New England skiing at Killington, Loon, SR, SL and then with western access to Big Sky, Copper, Brighton and Bachelor. That is about 3 million skier days in the East, with obvious destination options out West.

Whatever RMSP or Ikon are paying Powdr for Copper access is clearly a lucrative amount.
 

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