Matthew Prince says Vail Resorts has kept its resorts tied to a failing financial logic, and he’s pressing for Park City Mountain Resort to be sold to him—offering a radically different plan for how the hill should run and how Epic Pass fits in.
For years, Park City residents have known the rhythm of the snow. Now they’re hearing something new in the background: a billionaire making phone calls, building arguments on a spreadsheet, and insisting the town deserves a different owner.
Matthew Prince—50-year-old tech billionaire and the founder behind Cloudflare—has been pushing Vail Resorts to sell Park City Mountain Resort. the company’s flagship and the largest ski area in the U.S. On a Zoom call with The Colorado Sun. Prince held up a graphic showing Vail Resorts’ struggling stock price. “nearly identical today” to what it was in 2016.
Vail Resorts has never sold a ski area. and Prince says the company’s leadership has made that position feel permanent. “The current management team does not sell properties. ” Prince said. warning that the same people steering the ship may not be there for long. “Do you think the current management team is going to be around for long?. Something is gonna break.”.
He argues shareholders are likely to reach the same conclusion. Prince says Vail Resorts. which runs 42 ski areas in the U.S. Canada. Austria and Australia. is “a bad capital allocator.” His calculation is blunt: resort assets Prince believes are worth more than $5 billion sit against a market capitalization he puts at less than that total—derived from the company’s share price (around $137. down more than 60% from its 2021 peak) multiplied by the number of outstanding shares (around 35.6 million).
Prince doesn’t present this as a hypothetical. He wants to buy Park City Mountain Resort himself, insisting it’s “the right thing to do.” He frames the move as both a fix for the company and an opportunity for Park City to reset what locals think they’re getting.
His alternative is an “asset-light” franchise model. In that approach. Vail Resorts would not need to own 42 ski areas across three continents in order for resorts to offer Epic Pass. Prince’s idea is simple: “You don’t need to own the resorts in order to have the resorts take your pass.” He argues Vail should sell the resorts it holds and then negotiate franchise arrangements.
“The right answer here is to sell off the underlying resorts and then negotiate a franchise model,” Prince said. “You can’t have stock that is limping along for 10 years and not have a change.”
Prince believes the change is coming—and that it may not come gently. He says activist investors are already calling, describing them as investors who take stakes in undervalued companies and can dismantle them in hostile takeovers, invoking the film “Wall Street” and the character Gordon Gecko.
Prince says he’s not interested in taking over Vail Resorts as a whole. He doesn’t want the company. He wants one hill: Park City Mountain Resort. But he warns that if hostile bidders move in. they could pay for acquisitions by selling off Vail Resorts’ trophy properties—Whistler-Blackcomb. which Vail Resorts bought a decade ago for more than $1 billion. along with Breckenridge. Vail-Beaver Creek and Park City Mountain Resort itself.
“That is a serious problem,” Prince said. “I don’t think that people appreciate how big a hole they are in and how deep it can potentially go.”
He started pushing this idea in March through short social media bursts. In those early messages. Prince thought he might secure Park City within five years. though he also said he once believed it was “inevitable that I would get it in the next 25 years.” Now he says he’s increasingly convinced it could happen faster because. in his view. the company is already “in real trouble.”.
Inside Prince’s pitch for what ownership should look like, there’s a clear difference between his plan and other billionaire approaches in the region.
He says his operation wouldn’t be members-only like Wasatch Peaks Ranch to the north. It also wouldn’t match billionaire Reed Hastings’ idea for Powder Mountain to blend public and private skiing. Prince’s tone turns personal when he talks about Park City: “The last thing that I want to do in the world is hang out with more rich people. ” he said. “Park City should be a world-class resort, open to locals and visitors alike.”.
Yet he draws a hard line on unlimited mega-passes. He says he prefers limited access—likening his vision to Deer Valley, which is owned by Alterra Mountain Co.
Prince says he’s ready to invest $500 million into Park City Mountain Resort. His focus, he said, would be on snowmaking, lift upgrades, and sharing profits with employees.
He also points to aging infrastructure and local friction. Prince says he’s still “irked” about the 2025 holiday ski patroller strike in Park City. an event Vail Resorts admitted it did not handle well. He adds that Vail Resorts continues to rile some Park City locals as it proposes lift upgrades that could increase capacity without addressing parking challenges.
“Fundamentally, the problem here is that the town doesn’t trust them anymore so everything is going to be a fight,” Prince said.
His answer for local buy-in is one that sounds more like a power-sharing deal than a business proposal: “The town should own part of the resort.”
Prince says his goal in owning Park City Mountain Resort is not profit. Last year. he said. he paid an undisclosed sum for the Park City Town Lift plaza at the base of the ski area. which includes the land beneath the resort’s Town Lift climbing from the town’s historic Main Street. “I could give a shit about about making any more money,” he said. “I want to take the community that’s been incredibly supportive to me from the moment I was born. and give back to it.”.
He ties that sentiment to other local investments. In 2023, Prince and his wife Tatiana bought the 143-year-old Park Record newspaper from Ogden Newspapers. Prince says the paper’s sellers were reluctant. but after conversations with him “they told me … we believe you are the only person who can be a better owner than we are because you have the resources to make it better.”.
Prince is no stranger to clashing with Park City leadership. He spent the last few years in litigation with the town and neighbors over plans for a “palatial home overlooking town,” and he said the town recently settled the land use dispute, clearing the way for his palace.
Ownership, in Prince’s imagination, doesn’t end at one mountain. He talks about connecting resorts—starting with an agreement with Deer Valley next door so skiers can ski both resorts on the same ticket. He says such a deal would never happen between Alterra Mountain Co. and Vail Resorts.
He also sees a grand plan across the Wasatch Mountains: a gondola connecting Park City and Deer Valley with Brighton and Solitude in Big Cottonwood. and with Alta and Snowbird in Little Cottonwood. He references a plan first proposed in 2014 called One Wasatch. describing it as spanning nine miles and covering some 20. 000 acres of potential ski terrain.
“With someone other than Vail as an owner … you can connect all six resorts and create the largest skiable acreage anywhere in the world,” Prince said. “I want this place to live up to its opportunity and potential. That’s impossible with Vail Resorts as an owner.”
Prince says he would funnel all his profits back into the ski area and that he would not pocket a dollar. He frames it as a model that can work operationally, but not within a publicly traded company structure.
He’s also openly critical of Vail’s business style. He compares the Vail Resorts model to “McDonald’s,” saying, “There’s no personality,” and that Vail “commodifies and dumbs down everything.”
In his vision, Vail’s role becomes selling Epic Passes and persuading resorts to take them—while mountain operators and communities work together to improve their own appeal, strengthening their bargaining position with pass-selling companies like Vail Resorts and Alterra Mountain Co.
Prince calls it a “virtuous circle. ” saying the model would let both sides compete on customer experience and “still have these master passes that sit on top.” He argues the current structure doesn’t encourage resorts to create something unique and removes communities from the process of luring visitors.
“Everyone needs a strong community and then one crazy local billionaire,” Prince said.
(He then added a jab about Telluride, saying, “Don’t tell that to Telluride, where their local billionaire seems bent on chaos. ‘That guy is not fully capable,’ Prince says.”)
For now, Prince says he’s still trying to get through the door. He says no Vail Resorts executive has returned his calls. And he says that any sale would “require management change. ” because. in his view. the current leadership is “just so pigheaded” that it doesn’t make sense. He adds that selling Park City would benefit Epic Pass sales, Vail Resorts, and the town of Park City.
Vail Resorts’ CEO, Rob Katz, rejects the premise. Katz has repeatedly told investors Vail Resorts would not sell Park City Mountain Resort. In response to a question from The Sun. Katz said he “doesn’t think it makes sense. ” acknowledging Prince’s passion while drawing a hard line: “I love Matthew. He’s super passionate and I appreciate the feedback and enthusiasm from him, but no.”.
Katz says Vail Resorts’ structure—operating resorts across snowy regions nationwide—brings stability as climate change and weather patterns reshape snowfall across the country. “I don’t think resorts individually going it alone is the best approach,” Katz said.
On Prince’s franchise model, Katz frames it differently. The franchise concept, he said, “sounds kind of like McDonald’s,” countering Prince’s comparison of Vail to fast food. Katz also says Vail Resorts is not built to sell off properties. “Improving the ski experience is best done at scale,” he said. “In our minds we have to be the best company that we can be and set a standard for the industry and that’s not by selling off resorts.”.
That’s where the fight sits now: Prince argues the math and the stalled stock price show that Vail Resorts can’t keep treating resorts as assets that don’t move. Katz counters that scale, not ownership shakeups, is what keeps the industry stable—and that Park City is not for sale.
Still, the pressure hasn’t faded. In Park City, the stakes aren’t abstract. The town’s trust is already strained over labor issues, lift upgrades, and parking concerns. And in Salt Lake’s shadow. a question hangs over every next decision Vail makes: if the company won’t change. what happens when Prince—quietly but persistently—keeps pushing for the one hill he believes should belong to the community that supports it?.
Matthew Prince Cloudflare Vail Resorts Park City Mountain Resort Epic Pass Rob Katz asset-light franchise model Park City locals ski patrol strike Deer Valley One Wasatch