SAM Magazine—Denver, June 28, 2024—Alterra Mountain Company’s planned acquisition of Arapahoe Basin, Colo., is reportedly being reviewed by the Department of Justice (DOJ), which has issued a civil investigative demand to the National Ski Areas Association (NSAA) and RRC Associates seeking data from the association’s annual surveys on ski area economics and visitor demographics, which RRC conducts on behalf of NSAA. 

The news of the investigation into potential antitrust issues might explain why the transaction is taking so long to close. Alterra entered into an agreement to acquire Arapahoe Basin from Canadian real estate trust Dream Unlimited Corp more than four months ago on Feb. 5, 2024, which is longer than other recent U.S. ski area acquisitions have taken to close. Alterra’s 2023 acquisition of Schweitzer in Idaho, for example, took about half as long to close. When Vail Resorts bought Seven Springs, Laurel Mountain, and Hidden Valley, Pa., in 2021, the agreement was announced on Dec. 8 and closed on Dec. 31.   

Snowology’s Matthew Scott reported that NSAA sent a letter to its member resorts in the Rocky Mountain Region, which said the civil investigative demand “is a routine investigative tool used by the DOJ to collect information from various sources in order to study the proposed acquisition and to assess prospective impacts to competition in the region that may result.”

NSAA assured its members that the DOJ will maintain the confidentiality of resort-provided data and will not publicly disclose it. “Please understand that it is solely on strict background and not for any publication or representation to others,” NSAA told SAM. “This process is currently undergoing what we have been advised is a routine review by the DOJ, and by both statute and confidentiality agreements, the information at issue is confidential.” 

Jason Blevins of the Colorado Sun reported that Alterra said the filing with the Justice Department was “customary given the size of the transaction.” The details of the transaction have not been disclosed, but in a press release from Dream Unlimited announcing the sale in February, the company said, “Based on today’s exchange rate and internal estimates of taxes payable, management believes this sale will result in after-tax profit of $110 million before closing costs and adjustments.”

This is not the first time that ownership of A-Basin has been part of antitrust complications. Per Blevins’ report: “The Colorado attorney general and the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division in 1996 sued in U.S. District Court in Denver seeking to block Vail Resorts’ acquisition of Arapahoe Basin. Vail Resorts in 1996 announced a $310 million deal to buy Breckenridge, Keystone and Arapahoe Basin ski areas from Ralston Resorts, Inc. The civil lawsuit forced Vail Resorts to sell Arapahoe Basin to a Canadian real estate firm that became Dream Unlimited.” The transaction closed in 1998. 

Alterra owns Steamboat Resort and operates Winter Park Resort in Colorado. Alterra’s primary competitor Vail Resorts owns five Colorado resorts: Breckenridge, Beaver Creek, Crested Butte, Vail Mountain, and Keystone. Eight of the 12 ski areas within a two-hour drive from Denver—and more than half of all of Colorado’s roughly 29 ski areas—are on either Alterra’s Ikon Pass or Vail Resorts’ Epic Pass.