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Is Skiing a dying sport?
- Thread starter Ken_R
- Start date
Yup, no one goes skiing any more, its too crowded.
More stats at the link in the document: https://www.nsaa.org/NSAA/Media/Industry_Stats.aspx.
I think this chart is interesting, showing that unique participants has been close to flat domestically:
PS, fire whoever made that chart. Should have just labeled the X axis.
I think this chart is interesting, showing that unique participants has been close to flat domestically:
PS, fire whoever made that chart. Should have just labeled the X axis.
- Joined
- May 2, 2017
- Posts
- 4,344
So skiing is primarily a developed market sport, and developed market population grows by about 3%. What are US, Canada, , Europe and Japan GDP or real wage growth for the last 20 years?
Further gentrifying.
It’s getting squeezed, more people with money go to top places, non-top places struggle to stay in business, and access to the sport drops. It was always a sport of access (grow up in the mountains or have enough money to make trips/ buy second homes there), but just getting more so.
It’s getting squeezed, more people with money go to top places, non-top places struggle to stay in business, and access to the sport drops. It was always a sport of access (grow up in the mountains or have enough money to make trips/ buy second homes there), but just getting more so.
Can you show where this is true? What places are struggling? From everything that I've seen even some of the smaller ski areas are doing quite well but maybe I'm missing something
Looks pretty flat to me.
www.statista.com
Number of ski resorts United States 2021 | Statista
The number of ski resorts operating in the United States slightly declined during the 2020/21 winter season compared to the previous season.
www.statista.com
Utah sets records annually and up over 25 percent in the last ten years. The West is growing and the Northeast is shrinking.
Thread Starter
TS
Everyone wants to ski the pow pow not ice
Interesting. While unique visitors is flat, skier days are up, that means the same amount of skiers are skiing more. I think this can be attributed to passes. I take a close look at similar metrics when looking at SkiTalk, the amount of unique eyes verses returning ones.
I don't think this is the right take. Here are the graphs, with trendlines, for both skier visits and unique participants:
Even though the years don't line up, it's pretty flat for total visits and slightly upward trending for unique skiers. Total visits is actually slightly downward. Now the 2020 drop-off colors that... so let's assume 2020 is more in line with both 2019 and 2021... then you get these graphs:
Both visits and participants show a slight upward rise... very slight on total visits, and much more on the unique visits graph. And this is similar in slope to the upward rise of the population as a whole (which is why they had that line on the unique visits graph on statista).
Can't say I blame them. Skiing is very much a growing sport out West. And arguably growing too fast for some in terms of ability for infrastructure to keep up or preservation of the overall experience.
I’ve never skied east of Colorado, though by reports it seems there are simply fewer available ski days in the NE and Mid-Atlantic due to a shorter season, and fewer days means fewer skier visits. So even if the snow isn’t as much fun as ”out West” the availability to ski or board may be more limited, especially around the holidays when resorts typically see a large number of first time or occasional skiers.
More population growth in places like Seattle, the Bay Area, SLC and the Front Range means more skier days in those regions. Crowds at any resort in the PNW on weekends is not new, but the size of the crowding the past few years is unprecedented. Maybe it is the availability of multi-resort passes, which are only slightly more expensive (or even less expensive) than the single resort season passes they replaced, but a lot of it is due the overall population growth in these regions.
So it may look like skier days across the US as whole looks pretty flat, but I can tell you that around here, it is anything but flat.
This year was very unusual, with poor early season conditions, then a large amount of snowfall at the end of December, then nada for a couple months, then an amazing April and even into May. So great spring season conditions for die-hards and those of us in “lunatic fringe mode”, and probably very little in the way of new participant growth.
More population growth in places like Seattle, the Bay Area, SLC and the Front Range means more skier days in those regions. Crowds at any resort in the PNW on weekends is not new, but the size of the crowding the past few years is unprecedented. Maybe it is the availability of multi-resort passes, which are only slightly more expensive (or even less expensive) than the single resort season passes they replaced, but a lot of it is due the overall population growth in these regions.
So it may look like skier days across the US as whole looks pretty flat, but I can tell you that around here, it is anything but flat.
This year was very unusual, with poor early season conditions, then a large amount of snowfall at the end of December, then nada for a couple months, then an amazing April and even into May. So great spring season conditions for die-hards and those of us in “lunatic fringe mode”, and probably very little in the way of new participant growth.
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Any data on ski touring growth? Wouldn’t be skier days, but maybe something to do with equipment sales?
Thread Starter
TS
Many more new skiers out West than new terrain. Terrain has expanded but it is not enough and will never be enough at least here in Colorado. Even if you could expand, wildlife and ecosystems have been stressed enough as it is.
I think the present (and future) of ski areas here is to make the terrain they already have more skiable by trimming vegetation and thinning out forested areas of dead / beetle kill damaged trees. This helps spread people out and in turn reduce the fuel for fires. Some ski areas like Vail will greatly benefit from this given the amount of people that ski there.
Thread Starter
TS
It exploded when aki areas closed the lifts because of covid but it seems a LOT of people realized its not that easy and going uphill is hard and you spend more time going up than skiing down. Lots of AT setups for sale since last season.
- Joined
- Dec 2, 2015
- Posts
- 24,847
Not really true in the NE. Goes to mid April and usually closes for lack of people not snow. Will give you early November generally. Killington is open longer than most. Mammoth and Abasin and Hood? Doesn’t Hood close then reopen?
NSAA: new record set with 61 million US skier visits in 2021-22 season - TownLift, Park City News
NASHVILLE — The National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) reported at their annual convention on Friday that there was an all-time high of 61 million skier visits nationwide throughout the 2021-22
townlift.com